Kyrie Irving recently hosted a 24-hour livestream where he decided to recreate his response to that infamous interview question about LeBron James playing a parental role for him. With his father, Drederick Irving, next to him, Irving made it clear he only has one father.
“This is my dad,” Irving said. “I only have one father, Drederick Irving. I only have one father… So, W pops, man. I’m glad we got to recreate that meme, bro, because that question was crazy. When somebody asked me if LeBron was like a father figure to me, s*** was crazy. No kizzy. That was a crazy a** question.
“He’s like few years older than me, and you asked if he was my father figure,” Irving continued. “I got a father right there, Dredrick Irving. No disrespect, bro.”
That’s an unforgettable question, just for all the wrong reasons. As Irving pointed out, James isn’t all that older to him. The former was born in 1992, while the latter was born in 1984, so for someone to even bring that up was ridiculous.
This question was asked back in May 2015, when Irving and James were teammates on the Cleveland Cavaliers. Irving, who was 23 years old at the time, couldn’t believe that he was being asked if a 30-year-old James was playing a parental role for him.
Reporter: “Kyrie, Tristan [Thompson] called LeBron a great father after the Chicago game.”
Kyrie Irving: “What?”
Reporter: “Yes, he did.”
Irving: “Great father? Oh, a great father? Oh, I interpreted that completely wrong. I thought you said he was a great father to him. I was like ‘what?’”
Reporter: “Called him a great father. So, what type of parental role has he played for you and your teammates, LeBron?”
Irving: “Oh, okay, so you.”
Another Reporter: “You were right the first time.”
Irving: “Yeah. Parental role? Honestly… [laughs] I don’t know how to really answer that question. He has been a great leader for us. I have one father. That’s my dad, Drederick Irving. But for us, in terms of learning the nuances of the game, and also how to win on the court, and also how to carry ourselves off the court, I feel he has been a great influence in that role.”
What makes this just that little bit worse is that Irving’s mother, Elizabeth, had passed away when he was just four years old. Drederick had raised him as a single parent, so you wouldn’t blame him at all for being offended that a reporter would ask that question. Perhaps a big brother analogy would have worked, but not father.
The Irving and James partnership proved to be successful, but it didn’t last long. They became teammates on the Cavaliers in 2014 and led the franchise to its first-ever championship in 2016.
Irving would ask out, though, in 2017, with one of the reasons reportedly being that he no longer wanted to play with James. The Cavaliers would fulfill his wish by trading him to the Boston Celtics.
Years later, Irving expressed his regret over how he left James and the Cavaliers, and one wonders what might have been if they had stayed together. Their former Cavaliers head coach, Tyronn Lue, believes they would have won another title.
James has managed to win another championship since then with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020. Irving, meanwhile, came close to winning his second title, but his Dallas Mavericks lost to the Celtics in the 2024 NBA Finals.
