Kyrie Irving has become the central figure of the 2022 offseason after a blockbuster report from Sham Charania yesterday claimed that the contract extension talks between Irving and the Brooklyn Nets have stalled and that Irving is looking at possibly moving to either the Los Angeles Lakers or New York Knicks.
This is just another one of Irving’s clashes with the Nets organization after an extremely tumultuous year. Irving played just 29 games this season due to his refusal to get vaccinated. While he looked good as ever, the Nets ended up losing James Harden because of him and then became the only team to get swept during the 2022 Playoffs.
It seems like another reason for the Nets to possibly not give in to everything Kyrie wants is discordance between him and the Nets coaching staff, with Stephen A. Smith stating that Irving would allegedly hold his own practices after team practice. This could be looked at as Kyrie directly undermining the Nets coaching staff and Steve Nash.
“Did you know that this brother Kyrie Irving last season would conduct his own practices?So when Steve Nash had the team on the floor, and they practiced, they would finish and he’d go and get five guys and conduct his own practice. … Do you have any idea how disrespectful that is to Steve Nash?”
A superstar in the NBA has a lot more leeway to do what they want outside of games because they always deliver when it comes time for the game. Irving can’t say the same for himself, after a bare resume of games played since joining Brooklyn in 2019.
Irving’s resistance to being coached by Steve Nash is unsurprising after his older comments about the Nets not really having a head coach, proving that Irving already fancied himself to be a bigger voice on this team than what the Nets coaching staff has enabled. It seems the end of this relationship will be best for all parties involved.
