It’s not personal, Brooklyn. I just hate this city, the fans, and everyone in this organization and want to watch them burn out of spite.
The best part of the whole quote is where he says “It’s not personal.”
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t pay that much attention to the NBA these days, but I know who Kyrie Irving is, and when I saw this come up in my news feed, I had to scrunch my brow and just go wow. These are some bombs of words to be flinging out there, and in an age where people are reluctant to burn bridges because the internet has made the world small, everything is basically recorded forever, and people just don’t know when their words can come back to haunt them, Kyrie Irving still gave zero fucks and basically told not just the Brooklyn Nets, the team that he actively plays for and signs his paychecks, but the entire city of Brooklyn, New York, that he hates them and fuck you all.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Kyrie Irving; he’s this enigma of a human being that I feel was blessed with basketball talent, coasted through life, has enjoyed immense success professionally and made a tremendous amount of money, but is still somehow an insufferable asshole who seems to get off on being a contrarian.
However, personal feelings aside, like the title of this post says, I kind of respect the brutal honesty he had no hesitation in letting become a quote. At some point in most peoples’ lives, who hasn’t been furious with an employer before? Whether they cared to admit or not, felt the same kind of feelings towards those jobs, as he felt about the Brooklyn Nets? And on top of the discontent with his employer, in the world of sports, fans are about the most insufferable people on the face of the planet, much less ones from Brooklyn, New York.
I don’t really like Kyrie Irving, but I can only imagine the amount of bullshit he heard from fans on a regular basis. In spite of my personal feelings, I’m not going to deny for a second that the guy is talented as all hell, and is genuinely a generational-level talent; when he actually feels like putting in the effort. He can score, he can pass, and he can take over games by himself; I imagine a lot of the shit he hears on the regular is why he hasn’t delivered a championship for as much money as he’s making, as if sports fans were completely convinced that one guy could actually accomplish victory entirely by themselves.
Michael Jordan couldn’t. Kobe Bryant couldn’t. LeBron James couldn’t. They all had good teams surrounding them, and unfortunately for Kyrie Irving, he hasn’t had the right good team surrounding him since 2016, when he had LeBron James piloting the Cleveland Cavaliers team he was on.
So I kind of get and I do enjoy the unfiltered venom Kyrie Irving had to say about the Nets and the city of Brooklyn itself, and I applaud him for raising the bar for any discontented professional athlete that is demanding to be traded.