Is Kyrie a Gift or a Curse for the Brooklyn Nets?

Kyrie Irving of the NBA Brooklyn Nets has become one of the most polarizing athletes in professional basketball. Is he being unfairly scrutinized?

Kyrie Irving: The Good, The Bad and The Talented

When I watched Kyrie play I thought to myself, this guy reminds me of Rod Strickland. The first time I saw Rod play he was a freshman at Rice High School in Harlem. It may have been 1980. Over the years I saw a lot of Rod's games. I also played against his older brother, Byron Strickland. Byron was an incredible shooter, who never met a shot he didn't like, while Rod had an amazing handle and unbelievable body control. They were from the Bronx and both played the game fearlessly. Watching Kyrie, it looks like he's incorporated all the talents of the Strickland brothers I remember from my playground days. He's a drop dead shooter, has every dribble and ball handling maneuver in the book and like the Strickland's, he doesn't play scared or tentative. Its a New York City mentality often found on the playgrounds of my era. Instead of being in awe of how great Lebron James was, like the rest of the world, Kyrie voiced criticisms and let the world know that even the King had flaws.

Right or wrong Kyrie has gotten a reputation as a player who's teams play better without him. I never liked the Boston Celtic fit for him. Kyrie joined a team with most of its best and most dynamic players playing the same positions. They had young developing talent in Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Marcus Smart, who basically occupy the same spaces on the court. Then add in Gordon Heyworth, the incoming savior and a high volume scorer with the same skillset as Brown and Tatum. And what does Danny Ainge do? He brings in another high volume scorer, who moves and creates in the same ways as Heyworth, Brown and Tatum. Really? Danny threw a bunch of stuff on the wall to see if it would stick, leaving the young and somewhat unproven coach Brad Stevens to figure out the details. The chemistry experiment failed but no one blamed the mad scientist when it didn't work, instead they blamed the newest and most volatile ingredient of the experiment, Kyrie Irving.

So the roller coaster Celtic ride of Kyrie's tenure began. If the team won and Kyrie didn't play, they played better without him. When he returned and they lost, it confirmed they played better without him. The media pawns Kyrie talks about, whoever they are, must have made a point to lead with this storyline because it was propagated on every major sports outlet. It went like this, "the Celtics have lost 3 of their last 5 with Kyrie in the lineup", and then fans picked up on the implied assumption that the team is better without Kyrie Irving. But was this a cause or just a symptom of something else? What about the coaching? What about the GM decisions in selecting personnel? What if these players just didn't fit together? Is that Kyrie's fault too?

People are less interested in WHY things weren't working with Kyrie outside of the win-loss ratio. It didn't matter that the Celtics didn't have a shot of winning a championship without him, or that the team was put together with little regard for team chemistry or balance. The bottom line was, Kyrie made the most money, well almost anyway. Both Al Horford and Gordon Heyworth made more than Kyrie. They were traded, yet neither got an ounce of the blame for poor team performance. However, at the end of the day, it was Kyrie who forced himself out of Cleveland, and continued to make what many consider controversial statements about society, life and what he calls "media entertainment". It makes him a convenient target of criticism. He has been questioned for lacking leadership, being selfish and as an entitled cry baby who shirks responsibility. Even though none of his teammates or coaches ever came close to saying anything to support these perceptions. So, you tell me, is Kyrie a gift or a curse?

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