Kyrie Irving opted into his $37 million player option this week to remain with the Brooklyn Nets for one more season.
The move came on the heels of him exploring potential paths to not one, but two other NBA title contenders.
In the end, Irving decided to remain in New York for another year. But not everyone is happy about it.
Apparently, Irving was not the most pleasant person to be around.
“It wasn’t just about the vaccine mandate,” ESPN NBA insider Brian Windhorst said this week. “It was about the way Kyrie Irving treated his teammates, about the way Kyrie Irving treated his coaches.”
Yikes.
As far as the Nets are concerned, in order for Irving to be a legitimate member of the organization there must be a “renegotiation of the way the team operates.”
Irving played in just 29 outings last year. Over the course of three years in Brooklyn, he has missed more than 50 percent of the games. Along the way, he has also been mired in nonstop controversy.
Irving has been accused of getting high and being dumb on social media, trying to orchestrate things in a shady way and just being a general nuisance.
Kevin Durant has made his feelings on Irving explicitly clear.
When Irving is good, he is really good. He has averaged 27.1 points and 6.0 assists per game for the team when he has played. But the operative phrase there is when he has played. In order for those stats to matter, and in order to justify all the headaches and commotion that he inevitably brings, Irving needs to play more.
A lot more.
So that’s how Kliff Kingsbury is preparing for next season. https://t.co/5tDWsCpKmn
— Game 7 (@game7__) June 29, 2022
The Nets and Irving will apparently be stuck together for one more season. Somehow, things need to change in the dynamic of their relationship.
Will that end up happening?
Time will tell.
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A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
