That the Nets have tolerated Kyrie Irving this long is to their everlasting shame

November 1, 2022


By the time you read this, Kyrie Irving may have been waived by the Brooklyn Nets in the wake of his tweets giving a platform to an antisemitic film. As usual, I think Bomani Jones has simultaneously the most thoughtful yet righteous points about this situation of anyone I’ve seen in national media, saying that through his statements Irving has made it clear he wants to be taken seriously, but only selectively, and he refuses to take responsibility for harmful things he says and does because his apparent motivation is to feel that he is right.

Amid the ugliness of Irving’s sharing that film, then refusing to disown it while holding off on deleting his posts, there’s another bit of ugliness that I believe is mostly going unsaid because writers addressing this issue are taking it for granted, even though it is worth stating plainly: Irving wasn’t released immediately upon publication of his antisemitic tweets because the Nets believe he gives them a better chance to win basketball games.