As the NBA season rages into its second month, the Brooklyn Nets are still scrambling for solutions to their self-made mess.
After a summer of turmoil and drama, the Nets kicked things off about as bad as they possibly could have and now sit at just 4-7 on the season. But the worst of it all is the situation with Kyrie Irving, who has been eerily quiet since the development of his latest scandal.
Now, with no definitive answer on if Irving will meet his team’s demands, there are some real questions about his basketball future.
On Sirius XM NBA Radio, NBA analyst Jay Williams spoke about Irving and the Nets and insisted that he has probably already played his last game with the franchise.
“I’m not sitting up here as a Kyrie Irving apologist, but I will go back to the pandemic for a second. Kyrie Irving wasn’t the only player that was sitting out during the pandemic. There were other players who decided not to get vaccinated. It just so happened that he was in a city with mandates for players mostly on the home team to be vaccinated. If you aren’t vaccinated on the opposing team, you could come into Madison Square Garden, you could come into the Barclays Center and play… but it doesn’t excuse the lack of communication to the franchise,” said Williams. “Or not returning a text from Joe Tsai. There’s accountability and culpability to come to the podium after you post something like that and say, ‘this is what I meant. This is what I am searching for. Here’s what I denounce.’ The conversation would have been dead. So, it walks on both sides… but it does feel like the Brooklyn Nets are done with Kyrie Irving. And, frankly, the Brooklyn Nets seem done to be.”
Is Kyrie Irving done in Brooklyn?
🏀 @RealJayWilliams weighs in on Kyrie's future with the Nets #NetsWorld@RickKamlaSports | @adaniels33 pic.twitter.com/xwD6RQ7ZkM
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) November 8, 2022
Kyrie definitely deserves some criticism for the way he has handled things over the past couple of years. While Irving may not mean any harm, the failure to properly communicate his beliefs and ideologies has made things way more difficult than it has to be.
Had he just said ‘no’ when asked about supporting anti-Semitic ideas, this whole ordeal may have already be over by now. Instead, it’s dragging on and threatening to end Irving’s career in the process.
