NEW YORK -- These are all self-inflicted wounds for Kyrie Irving, every one, except what would be the smallest one:
Getting the shot.
This is the one about someone as intelligent as Irving, as socially aware, sabotaging himself and his team and his chance to win another NBA championship, which would mean winning one with LeBron James and Kevin Durant in the same lifetime. Irving said on Instagram the other day that this is all about freedom of choice. It is. A smart guy is making one that is not just bad, but monumentally dumb.
It is why the Brooklyn Nets should look into getting rid of him sooner or later, seeing if there is possibly a taker for him, with all of his baggage, old and new, perhaps from one of the teams from the dumber states when it comes to covid, and that means we're talking about you Florida and Texas.
Even if the Nets only got a player one-third as good as Irving in return, 33% of something is better for the Nets and their championship ambitions than 100% of nothing. Which is what they're going to get from Irving this season unless, and until, he wises up on vaccines.
Irving, at his best, ranks with the best smaller guards to ever play the game. He is that good, that gifted at basketball, as much as he continues to go out of his way to make people forget that. He is still only 29 years of age, and the dream he and Durant chased to Brooklyn is still very much within his reach, if he will just get out of his own way.
This isn't merely about the millions of dollars he will be walking away from if he doesn't play basketball this season. That's also about freedom of choice. He's obviously made enough money in his NBA career that he can make the choice not to follow the rules of his league and the mandates of his city and effectively quit on his stool.
Here is part of what Irving said on Instagram the other day as he addressed his current situation, and his team's:
"The financial consequences, I know I do not want to even do that. But it is reality that in order to be in New York City, in order to be on a team, I have to be vaccinated. I chose to be unvaccinated, and that was my choice, and I would ask you all to just respect that choice. ... I am going to just continue to stay in shape, be ready to play, be ready to rock out with my teammates and just be part of this whole thing. This is not a political thing. ... This is about my life and what I am choosing to do."
He is, at least for the time being, choosing to waste his basketball life for being this off-balanced on vaccination, another American in the year 2021 who doesn't believe science, who doesn't want to be told what to do, who is not only putting himself at risk but those around him. There is nothing heroic about this.
He says he is doing what he is doing because it "feels good" to him. Well, hooray for Kyrie. But you have to know how Durant feels about this, whatever support he's thrown Irving's way in public. It is hardly a secret that Durant is angry as hell. And has a right to be. He came back from his Achilles injury and could have gone anywhere, gone to the Knicks or somebody else. He chose the Nets. He chose Brooklyn. He and Irving were going to do this big, basketball thing together. And now Irving, in a selfish act that he wants to come up noble, he turns his back on Durant and turns his back on his team. What a guy.
The reason a large section of the media has turned on Irving, and it is the same media that did celebrate his work after the murder of George Floyd, is because he is dead wrong on vaccines. Period. And on the mandate for people to get them. Or lose their jobs because of that mandate, even if they don't have the kind of money that Irving has.
"I'm rocking with all those that have lost their jobs to this mandate and I'm rocking with all those that chose to get vaccinated and are choosing to be safe as well. I'm on both sides of all this," Irving says.
The people Irving talks about who have lost their jobs because of the vaccine mandate have lost their jobs because they are engaged in the same sort of slow thinking on vaccines that Kyrie Irving is.
And whatever the total on his lost money is in the end, what price tag does he place on potentially losing a season like this with a team like this, in what ought to be his basketball prime? Maybe someday he won't want to have back the time he's going to lose. But maybe he will.
I have no idea if there is a deal out there to be made for Irving, if the Nets could get a bag of balls in returns for him at this point, despite what can be a thrilling talent. They ought to try. At this point the people in charge of the Nets are probably tired of rocking with Kyrie Irving, at least as long as he keeps acting as if he has rocks in his head.