The earth is not flat, and Kyrie Irving knows that the earth is not flat. (We think.)
In an interview with Toucher and Rich in Boston on Tuesday, Irving said that his propagation of a flat-earth theory was an “exploitation tactic.”
“It literally spinned the world, your guys’ world, it spinned the world into a frenzy,” Irving said. “It created a division. ... It became like, because I think different … because I believe that the world is flat, and you believe that the world is round. Does that knock my intellectual capacity or the fact that I can think different things than you can?”
Kyrie went on to say that his theory, which he first espoused on the Road Trippin’ podcast at the All-Star Game in New Orleans, was just an attempt at having “an open conversation.”
OK, let’s break this down.
First, the surface level: This is all so dumb. (I know, expert-level analysis, right?) Kyrie saying the earth is flat in the first place, doubling down on it multiple times, getting other players to endorse it, even as a joke, and then choosing to half-heartedly deny that he ever believed in the theory’s validity on a local radio show. It’s all so … pointless, unnecessary. Pick an adjective. If Kyrie really is trolling us all, he’s doing it in the lamest way possible.
Choosing to revive an extinct theory that is a part of regular school education to try to make a point about the judgmental world we live in is really weak. Kyrie could have made this point in infinite other ways, but he decided to defy a scientific truth to prove his theory, and even caused unnecessary issues for science teachers.
But I guess this is who Kyrie is now, a slightly divisive guy. When he inexplicably went on First Take last week, he was cryptic, short, and unapologetically curt about his pre-trade situation in Cleveland, his relationship with LeBron, and his desire to do his own thing. So far, it’s looking like Kyrie’s “own thing” is to be eccentric just for the sake of it.
Sure, Kyrie may be right about how easy it is to be outraged about anything and I’m all for players saying what they want, but when you see LeBron and other NBA players continually use their platforms to speak about social issues, it makes Kyrie trolling us all about the shape of the earth seem especially unnecessary.
What’s the endgame here, anyway? Fittingly, that’s a question that could be applied to everything Kyrie has done since the start of 2017. And the season hasn’t even tipped off yet.