What will remain of Kyrie Irving’s legacy? It is a legitimate question that has become urgent these days.
In recent years it has been stained with behavior and statements ranging from ridiculous to serious but the tweet sponsoring a film based on a book labeled as anti-Semitic is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
What, then, will remain of its legacy? The risk, now almost a certainty, is that everything he has done off the pitch will cloud his immense talent ball in hand.
In 2016 he put the decisive triple for the title of LeBron’s Cavs against Steph Curry’s Warriors. An epic comeback from the past from a 3-1 disadvantage in the series with the signing of him to give his big brother LeBron finally the triumph at his home.
Then LeBron left, he chose the Celtics and it was a half disaster. Since 2019 he has been in Brooklyn looking for revenge but in the meantime something must have snapped in his head.
Roughly that three-point shot for the title was a turning point. From there he never came back.
It began softly, heralding a radical diet change. She became a kind of vegan ultra, nothing to say, were it not for the emphatic tones and the uncompromising proselytizing effort.
Then he went down into politics, hard-nosed and in no uncertain terms. He took a stand in defense of Native Americans in a project against the installation of oil pipelines in North Dakota and intervened in the delicate Floyd case by giving an apartment to the family of the unfortunate.
The result was a small hero, attentive to social causes, certainly in the minority with colleagues who do not have the slightest sensitivity on important issues that are not strictly a pick and roll.
Too bad, however, because the first signs of a drift were all there. There are at least three stages that have publicly put him in the wrong.
First step. “The earth is flat”. The boy is convinced of it, he said it, then denied it, then repeated it, then denied it again but basically he never completely abjured.
What do we mean? Anyone who denies the evidence of science, I’m sorry to say, is just a gullible fool. Professor Alessandro Barbero tried to explain it, among many others. The earth is not flat as it is true that I am not the Prime Minister. Point and do not argue.
Second stage. “The vaccine I do not do”. This is a delicate and unfortunately still current issue. I personally respect those who have decided not to get the vaccine to protect themselves from Covid for their convictions but I do not respect those who deny its effectiveness and therefore its scientific validity or worse still those who spread fake news out of all logic.
For example, those who say that the vaccine activates a microchip to control our brains or who, and here we return to our Kyrie, is convinced that “secret societies are administering the vaccine in a plot to connect blacks to a computer database to subdue them”.
These are such raving words that I find it hard to bring them back from English. They speak for themselves. As crazy as these “theories” may seem they are in someone’s mind, fortunately in the minority, albeit at times in prominent positions.
For Kyrie it is just like that. His power is called media influence and in this society where so much passes through the Internet, and social media in particular, his role is no less decisive than that of a politician or a manager of a multinational. His words are echoed by the media and it is especially young people who are fascinated by them, not just basketball fans.
Third stage. “I like this anti-Semitic film“. Hence the suspension and the sensational case reported by the media around the world.
Our Corriere della Sera also felt the urge to waste its italics of the day on Kyrie. In a period of new government with skyrocketing bills and record inflation, with a war in Europe, with the pandemic certainly not over, the dean of our newspapers speaks instead of this case, signed by Matteo Persivale.
The film is a “horrid hodgepodge that combines citations from the Protocols of the Sages of Zion (a forgery written by the Tsarist secret police in the early 1900s) with conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds.”
If only Kyrie stood up as a champion of just causes, he would truly be a hero. Today we do not need only great basketball players but models who know how to speak, especially to the youngest, about important issues, raising awareness and showing the way.
Anti-Semitism is not a negotiable value. Anyone who alludes to conspiracy theories, always the same, which can be summed up in slogans such as “the Jews secretly rule the world” cannot fail to pay the consequences.
Let alone in a league where the Commisioner, coincidentally, is really a Jew. It therefore sounds unsurprising how the suspension is corroborated by a range of actions that our hero must comply with in order to “redeem himself”.
He must therefore apologize for condemning the film, donate half a million dollars to “anti-hate” associations, attend “re-education” courses and in particular courses against anti-Semitism, meet with representatives of the Jewish community and the Anti-Defamation League, the organization that fights against the persecution of Jews.
I have a little theory about Kyrie, obviously random not knowing the man beyond the basketball court. For me he is not driven by malice or racism. After all, he is a good guy who has fallen into one of the evils of the contemporary world.
This evil can be summed up in the jagged universe of conspiracy theories. It is a long and delicate speech, but in short, the ancient vice of conspiracy, of which the Protocol cited above is the most shining example, is today largely enhanced by the ease of connection that each of us has in the comfort of his room.
Those who fall into this trap tend to believe that the world is not as we are told and that there is always something underneath, behind, on the side. Worse, there is always someone secretly plotting against us, against our community. The truth is denied us, we are gullible of the prevailing media, we must dig beyond the surface, we are in danger and our enemies want to destroy us.
In Kyrie’s case, I see this. A sensitive boy, who wants to have an impact even off the pitch, influenced by the desire to emerge but taking the shortcut. Making out-of-the-box statements brings him higher in media consideration, he knows it and deep down he likes it.
He has partly a healthy desire for social activism, partly a huge ego, partly a lot of naivety but above all a lot of ignorance. I want to believe he reads a book more than the average of his fellow NBA athletes, so just one, it doesn’t take long. Too bad, however, do so from the most absurd sources.
I certainly do not imagine him immersed in crazy and desperate studies at the Leopardi, he is a professional player and he would not have the time in the first place. At least.
So the shortcut is to stay on social media, believe yourself to be smart and more cunning than the others, it’s the something I have to do, you have to wake up, act. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is called the net, to catch the gullible on duty who imagines that he is the smartest and most intelligent one.
The driving force, I imagine, is his personal awareness of the role of an African American man in American society today.
In the end, it’s all about this. The film proposes a link between Jews and blacks, the vaccine would be a conspiracy against the same blacks and so on. The key, in my view, is racial.
I don’t want to go any further, because anyway they would be guesses. The reality is that all this fuss is destroying the aspirations of the Nets and ruining his career, let’s not forget that he missed almost an entire season over the issue of the missed vaccine.
What remains of its legacy then, to finally answer the initial question. I imagine one of those discussions, maybe at the barbershop or on the subway, in the near future. Do you remember Kyrie? About that three-shot of the Finals?
But what shot, our interlocutor could answer. I remember that he did not get the vaccine and that he missed many races, that he was fined, I remember that he railed against the Jews.
Turning to the past, we know, we tend not to go into too much depth. Only the core remains, indeed, only the impression remains, often not clean.
I’m sorry for Kyrie but it’s her fault. Ah, if I were also in this ideal discussion, I would actually have a dry answer. Maybe it’s an illusion or just what I would like but I would have no doubts.
Kyrie? Kyrie Irving! How can you forget about him! He was the greatest ball handler in NBA history.
“And something remains between the light pages and the dark pages …”
