The Kyrie Irving saga has taken yet another turn. The Brooklyn Nets finally took a stance and said that they won’t allow him to play as a part-time player. It’s either he gets the vaccine or he won’t play or practice at all.
Irving will also forfeit his salary for all the home games he’s ineligible to play, meaning that the Nets are for real when they mean that they don’t think he’s committed to them.
That’s why Stephen A. Smith said that, according to his sources, the Nets would trade Kyrie in a second right now, although they can’t because no other team is going to want to have anything to do with him:
“I completely applaud the Brooklyn Nets for taking this position,” Smith said on ESPN’s First Take. “I said it before and I’m telling y’all again. They’d give his *ss away for a box of cookies if they could. They’re so disgusted with this dude. I’m telling you what I know, y’all figure out how the hell I know that. I ain’t asking, I’m telling you, it’s that disgusted. Is just like Kendrick Perkins said: This brother when he said that he’d retire if he gets traded, we don’t know if he might… He ain’t playing now, he’s that kind of dude! And so, as a result, you’ve got teams that don’t wanna trade for him A because he might retire or B because he might be just as much trouble for them because his focus ain’t just on basketball.”
Smith said that Kyrie’s trade value is virtually zero because no team trusts him. Moreover, that could mean that the Nets could lose James Harden with Daryl Morey trying to get him to the Sixers:
“Why give away that for a dude you cannot trust? And be clear: You cannot trust Kyrie to be anything but Kyrie. He’s gonna do what he feels is best for him and everybody else be damned. And it’s a damn shame because now you might lose James Harden because Daryl Morey is lurking at Philadelphia and don’t think for one second that Daryl Morey ain’t trying to get his hands on James Harden. I’m telling you what I know,” Smith concluded.
Daryl Morey is as aggressive as they come so you know he won’t hesitate to give away multiple assets to get his franchise player back. That doesn’t seem far-fetched at all, even if there aren’t any rumors about that.
As for Kyrie, maybe he never thought the Nets would move on from him and show him that no one is above the organization.
