He said as much on the Road Trippin’ pod, hosted by Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, and Cavs sideline reporter Allie Clifton. Even if some of us haven’t always recognized it, Irving has. He may not be as mouthy as Draymond or as flashy as Russ, but Kyrie Irving has become one of the best overall entertainment values in the NBA. Reporters sometimes dismiss him as little more than a bland pack interview, while others have wondered if he purposefully messes with the media - like when he walked back the flat-earth pronouncement, said he was well aware it’s scientifically impossible, then turned the whole thing around on the fourth estate, adding that the fact "that could actually be news" was "hilarious."īut how he interacts with press scrums seems less important when measured against the open - and often oddball - alter ego he adopts in more comfortable and revealing settings. The media and Irving have an intermittently prickly relationship. ![]() It was not an uncommon sentiment in this industry. When I mentioned to a friend and fellow NBA scribbler that I was in Cleveland to work on a Kyrie Irving piece, he gave me heat and texted something about how he’d rather put his head in a blender. On the contrary, it’s underrated - which isn’t the same as being universally popular. The point is that Irving’s brand isn’t boring. OK, that last one probably doesn’t count for much, because who doesn’t get into it with LaVar Ball these days? Even so. He might think the earth is flat, among other opinions that some consider strange. He has an ongoing series of commercials for Pepsi - several of which he directed - in which he disguises himself as an old graybeard named Uncle Drew and clowns random dudes on various playgrounds. This year, he has the second-best-selling signature shoe in the NBA, behind only his teammate, LeBron James. He won a gold medal at the Rio Olympics last year. That kid became an NBA All-Star and a champion and a trash-talker (and a champion trash-talker, or at least a champion scoreboard pointer). Anyone who likes hoops has heard tell of the child prodigy - born in Australia, raised in Jersey - who went off to Duke only to be more of a whisper than a player in Durham because of a toe injury. Still, the footwear made its way into the hands of resellers, who offered the shoes online for nearly $7,000 before their listings were ultimately removed.Sometimes it feels like basketball fanboys/nerds/media don’t talk about Kyrie as a character very often - which is odd when you consider all the time he’s spent being one. “I do not know how someone else has their hands on shoes I designed in honor of my daughter, Gigi, and we don’t,” she wrote on Instagram. ![]() After images of the unreleased shoe circulated the internet, Kobe Bryant’s widow Vanessa took to Instagram to speak out against the sneakers, saying she never approved their production. Out of touch - Last month, a similar scenario played out through a pair of “Mambacita” Protro Kobe 6 sneakers. In response to an Instagram post featuring leaked images of an unassembled shoe, said to be the upcoming Nike Kyrie 8, Irving commented, “I have nothing to do with the design or marketing of the upcoming Kyrie 8, IMO these are trash! I have absolutely nothing to do with them! Nike plans to release it without my okay regardless of what I say, so I apologize in advance to all of my sneaker heads and true supporters of the KAI11 brand.” The Brooklyn Nets player, who has been signed to Nike for seven years, has helped create some of the brand’s best-selling shoes - but he had no input on the latest Kyrie sneaker design, he claims, calling the footwear “trash.” Since Kobe Bryant’s estate cut ties with Nike - a painful and poorly handled affair on the brand’s end - the Swoosh has focused on its other popular basketball lines, including Kyrie Irving’s signature sneakers.
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