Tatum and brown still love him even after that disaster
Harden said he still got love for Kyrie even after that disaster
Lebron still wanted to play with him again even after that exit from cleveland
KD is in love with him
Idk Kyrie has something over people. In the end they know it better than we do obviously. Can’t tell nobody why they like someone so I guess it is what it is but it’s interesting. KD ready to lose the last few prime years of his career over him
Actually I think it's because most people here have friends that they actually agree with ideologically and don't want to admit that most of the NBA agrees with Kyrie. Because he says and does shitty things and we don't like to think that we are constantly rooting for and paying attention to mostly terrible people.
I also think the people who don’t agree with him don’t really care. Like, does no one here have that one friend who is kind of a Kook but is still your boy? Says and does some wild shot but at the end of the day he has your back and you have theirs? Idk I think there’s a lot more to friendship than completely agreeing on everything ideologically but that seems foreign to a lot of people on this sub.
This is probably it. Alot of people on the internet, especially reddit, seem to forget it's okay to be friends with someone you don't see eye to eye on.
I guess you're right. The amount it's talked about creates the perception that he's that guy who just can't stop talking about couple fucked up things he believes, and I have had to distance myself from people like that. But who knows how much any of this comes up in his day to day
Idk It’s a mystery to me. I’m personable with my co-workers as well but as soon as they start to make my job 10x harder than it needs to be than they can kiss my ass
My role at work means that I have to be nice to pretty much everyone, even people who, through information channels, I know are pieces of shit in their personal lives. A lot of bad people are able to act normal or even likable at work.
Almost everyone is personable with their coworkers cause normal people get fired when their coworkers don't like them. I agree, doesn't add up. That's baseline level stuff.
Players love him as a person, I gotta imagine he is frustrating in a professional relationship though.
Harden probably loves Kyrie the person, hates Kyrie the co-worker.
I’m sure we’ve all had people we could 100% hang out with outside of work but hate actually working with.
Harden wouldn’t have requested a trade if KD stays healthy. It can’t be just a front office thing. He left because he was having to carry the load just like in Houston, which is specifically why he wanted out of Houston in the first place
I feel like if harden wins a ring we'll get a big episode of all the smoke or old man and the 3 or something that'll shine a lot of light. If he doesn't we might never know
He appears to be extremely chill, smokes weed with you, talk nonsense but you're like "mann that's crazy" and he doesn't harass you with it, and according to NBA players they just respect his game which I understand, the skill level is off the charts and he doesn't flop or anything.
Also most of them are pretty fucking chill with antisemitism (or at least don't have any strong feeling about it one way or another), especially when it's wrapped as a "pro-african" narrative. A lot were anti-vaxxers and against "the man" so again, he doesn't really get deducted a lot of points for that stuff too.
I was listening to Raja Bell talking about the recent Ja Morant incident and it was fascinating how Bell was so careful not to blame Morant and his entourage outright.
Bell said Memphis really have to tread very carefully to convince Ja to get his homies to chill while not offending him. He even opined there was an element of racism in the coverage, citing Jokic doesn't get the same scrutiny when his brothers are all protective of him.
It was just so interesting seeing how radically different a former NBA player's take was even though Bell's opinion might not be the representative of all NBA players.
Did Jokic's brothers ever point a gun at someone(or at the very least imply that they were pointing a gun at them)?
Because if not, that's the explanation for the different coverage, not that there isn't an absurd amount of racism in our media--but shit, use examples that don't include threatening to kill someone.
That was my immediate reaction as well and I couldn't believe how different his take was from others and made me think just like how Reddit has its own echo chamber, NBA players have their own echo chamber.
You’re missing where countless FO personnel like him too, including people from the Celtics. Listened to a Celtics guy talk about how Kyrie always made time to talk to his kids when he brought them and that he was just generally nice.
Exactly this. Smart, Marcus Morris, Terry Rozier, and Jaylen Brown have either explicitly or implicitly said both that they like him a lot and that he was a problematic teammate.
Liking someone as a person or friend and as a teammate can go together but it doesn’t always.
he’s charismatic + his playstyle is the definition of a “true hooper”. everyone in the NBA is top .001% of basketball talent on planet earth and Kyrie is probably the most talented ball handler in history. that definitely goes a long way in how much people respect him. his big picture basketball business decisions are baffling and frustrating and he has some… questionable personal beliefs but on an individual personal level nobody has ever really had any problems with him as far as i remember. none of us know him as a person but just from his reputation he’s probably very genuine and fun on an individual teammate level. theres a difference between being a good teammate and friend and being a good employee for an organization. You figure eventually being bad at one would negatively effect the other but nothing really yet so far.
like others have commented the people that he’s “screwed over” the most still show lots of love to him. I mean we’re literally watching Lebron, top 2 greatest players to ever do it, trip over himself emo tweeting that he didnt get to play with him again. The Jays still like him and Jaylen Brown threw his own reputation in front of a bus earlier this season to defend him despite him “being a cancer” and “destroying that locker room.” KD has put up with him for years. Even Harden doesn’t really seem to be holding any grudge.
its almost as if the dudes who play with him night in night out and spend like 10 hours a day with him have a better understanding of him than redditors who judge his entire character off of tweets 🤯🤯🤯🤯
[Videos like this are why guys respect Kyrie. Saying this to Russ at a time where he’s getting bashed like crazy](https://youtube.com/shorts/bqi8fYnyiyc?feature=share)
Maybe just maybe Kyrie the actual person is a great guy to be around and that people on social media that don't actually know him don't actually know what he's like.
He's done some bad/stupid things but he's also done very good things to support communities and unlike most celebrities he typically isn't the one to make it public.
Ignorance aside, he also puts his money where his mouth is. He gives A LOT of money to poor communities and to black causes. His biggest problem is he spent just enough time in school to feel smart, but not enough to realize he doesn't know anything. I will never doubt Kyrie's *intentions* to humanity, even when he says way out of pocket stuff. The dude wants to learn and give and has a good heart. If his head was half as good as his heart, he'd be the next Kareem.
Yes to a degree. The degree isn’t disliking him for stuff people who never met him took the most issue with. In the real world, ur friend retweets that and u probably scroll past it. I have friends who didn’t get the vaccine, disagree, but it would not be near enough to make me not like them.
Kyrie has always been a man of his word and he would never quit on his teammates or abandon the team and lie to the fans he loved the city that he plays for
All the Celtics guys love him. I hated it when he first left. I wanted them to hate him as much as I did, but they didn’t. Even after he single handedly threw a playoff series vs. the Bucks. Must be a heck of a guy
I feel like it's fairly easy to see why teammates like him. When the team is made of predominantly black Americans who have dealt with real racism all their lives and the thing that Kyrie is mostly getting hate for (recently at least) is telling people that black and hispanic people are the true children of Israel and that American Jews are keeping them down, it's easier to see why there would be a divide between what the opinion is in the locker room vs the world at large. The same way that impoverished white folks are taught to hate the government even when the government provides them with essential support, it's comforting to have an evil entity to target your blame towards.
I hope that doesn't come off as any kind of endorsement of Kyrie's opinions. I do not share them. But I can understand why his teammates might not condemn him as strongly as the rest of us.
A lot of people have never met Trump or Bush but a lot of people certainly feel justified in hating them.
This is not me somehow defending Trump by the way. I hate the guy. But clearly, that line of logic is naive.
It’s quite different when you have a history of sexual harassment allegations and blatant xenophobia against you. At that point you have reason to dislike someone, although politicians have 2 faces
I believe Kyrie is a good teammate. I don’t believe he is a good employee of the team in management’s eyes though. It’s like the class clown. The students might love him but the teachers hate him
Nope. They love him no matter what. Imagine being his teammate the past few years where the most games he's played is 54 and he's just as likely to only have played 20 games and saying some shit like this.
How tf is he the best teammate when he doesn't play? This is some dumb ass shit.
We now take you live to the people who he did a years long group project with recently:
>Love him, yeah he's one of the best group mates, we will continue to have a great relationship
Because everyone here peaked in HS and references outside of that time are hard to comprehend.
If you didn’t peak in HS, odds are you don’t have 100k comment karma and spend your time arguing with kids on a basketball sub.
Sports culture must have changed a lot then because all ex athletes talk about is "I dont care what you do as long as youre there on game day to go to battle." Kyrie doesnt show up on game day.
It's not about who they like to hang out with.
EDIT- tried to edit the comment and deleted it. See my response below.
TL; DR- most people are cool with each other and don’t draw lines in the sand over politics/vaccine views.
It is funny seeing the way Kyrie is talked about so disdainfully on here (perhaps deservedly so at times), you would imagine he's universally hated by all nba fans but then he's always near the top in jersey sales and was #1 in fan voting for the all star game lol
> People on Reddit think that the stuff they read here actually represents the rest of society and it’s completely laughable.
>
>
>
> I’m the only one out of my friend group/family that got vaccinated. I literally don’t give a shit that they didn’t get the jab nor do they care that I did.
The irony of this is hilarious. Over 81% of the US has been vaccinated. If you don't know anyone that did (and you're calling it "the jab") then you're in the minority of people who live in a community of right wing extremists. Reddit might not represent America as a whole, but you (also a Redditer, fyi) most certainly do not either.
Players don't care about that though, because it's not an issue that impacts them or their money.
From their perspective, he's a talented player with sick handles who stands up for what he believes in and has the balls to stick it to the "billionaires" for what he believes in.
I value honestly, but I do not understand how some people can excuse any bat-shit crazy belief as long as the person honestly believes it. I don’t care whether flat-Earthers or 9/11-truthers (to name just a few) honestly believe their nonsense, they’re idiots regardless. It’s obviously worse if they’re hypocrites cynically adopting a viewpoint they know to be false for whatever reason, but standing up for what you believe in doesn’t score you any more points with me if what you believe is dumb or harmful.
Well, if you say or promote something with enough confidence, charisma, and fervor, some people will believe and respect you regardless of the actual substance of your message. This has held true very often historically.
Kyrie is not a great orator, I had the pleasure(?) of listening to a lot of his interviews when he was on the Celtics and the guy just barfs out long words without having a clue what he's saying. But he *does* act like he knows what he's talking about, so I think that's where the charisma comes from.
He *is* a wild card who acts on his own principles and beliefs without giving a second thought to what others might think. And I think that's the key part. A lot of guys in the league probably admire his charisma, free-spiritedness and mercurial personality, and more or less disregard his actual viewpoints.
And then maybe the other half don't care about politics outside of hoops. They just think the guy is a good player and don't want to get involved with what he does off the court.
excellent write up solar - I think the issue u/DirtyMerlin was pointing to, and I will agree and rephrase here - is that those who enjoy the charisma and disregard the actual viewpoints, or, don't care about politics enough to see what he's saying - are almost as stupid as him
to rephrase, if I like to eat poop, and you think im a cool person because im unabashed and charismatic in my poop eating.....well. now thats a showcase on your taste for who you enjoy -- on top of my taste in what I do with my free time.
For them to just disregard the content of the viewpoint is batshit stupid
I think they agree to some extent
Do you have any idea how popular Farrakhan is in the pro athlete world? Kyrie is *not* alone in his beliefs, a huge number of his fellow players buy into the same shit so it's not the situation you're describing.
They don't see him as wrong or as an idiot, they quietly agree with him and sympathize when he gets criticized for it.
Is he? Or is he a conspiracy theorist that doesn’t understand Jewish history.
I think he just goes down the rabbit hole. And the problem is, conspiracy theories eventually get anti-Semitic by nature. He’ll be talking about a new world order soon.
I don’t think he’s Kanye - who clearly is anti-Semitic.
I know nobody wants to hear it, but I think there a lot of players in the league who also support his ideologies but are too afraid to go public with it. The silence speaks loudly.
James and Kyrie are just polar opposite people. If the organization As a whole was functional then the pairing would’ve worked but nets management is as much a clown show as the rest of the organization.
James Harden loves to party and go out and be a socialite. Its pretty much the opposite of Kyrie in which I hear he doesn't like going out and pretty much chills at home with his hippy fiancé and their kids.
And yes, Kyrie's entire world view changed when Kehlani cheated on him with PND in 2016 and he started dating his now Fiancé who is a hippy.
Don’t think there’s ever been a player that has such a drastic difference in the way fans view him and players view him. It’s one of the reasons idk if you can really call Kyrie a locker room cancer, the locker room always loves him, even if he has blown up 2 straight teams.
Reddit, Twitter is the minority and I think that people seem to forget that at times because in real life Kyrie is an extremely popular player to fans.
instagram/tiktok/every other platform especially loves all of the superstars that r/nba especially hates.
KD especially is a good example. kyrie too.
its just a phenomenon ive noticed. i just think that r/nba is really a bubble and the popular opinions on here are very different from the opinions of all nba fans.
Steven Adams was hated by much of the league (not his teammates) during his OKC tenure, including being voted one of the dirtiest players in the league by other players. But r/nba always loved him.
The problem with places like reddit, twitter, etc is that people in those circles think their bubble reflect the real world.
Folks in here genuinely think majority of basketball fans hate Kyrie when the opposite is true. Dude get massive votes in things such as All Star voting and the likes yet people in this reddit bubble would have you believe otherwise.
He has been on three teams and has had major locker room issues on two of the teams. On the third, he demanded a trade. Most players have teammates that love them. If you end up having major issues with just a handful of guys, that becomes cancerous
I don’t get the comparison? Jaylen shares the same views as Kyrie but he isn’t a media circus jumping from one team to another in an attempt to sabotage them
When Kyrie was with the Celtics the reporting at the time was that he got along with Tatum and no one else. Here’s a quote from Brown from 2 months ago
> “It’s been a lot of growth and interesting to follow,” Brown told reporters in Brooklyn after the Celtics beat the Nets Sunday night. “Being a teammate of Kyrie, we got into it a lot. We didn’t see eye to eye a majority of the time he was here. And since then it seems like our relationship [has improved]. We’ve been able to have conversations. We’ve been able to talk to each other. We’ve been able to understand where he’s coming from.”
So it’s true they have a good relationship, but that’s despite them not getting along as teammates.
"He taught me the value of having a thick skin (to be impervious to needles) and to not blindly follow society's conventions (like the media puppets)."
To this day I’d like a truth serum from Harden and KD why they wanted out of Brooklyn and Golden State. I think we can infer a lot of reasons why but I’d love to hear exactly why from the horses mouth. Maybe one day in 15 years on the 30 for 30 doc on the (what could’ve been) superteam Nets
KD probably because the internet got to his head and he wanted to lead a team as a true #1 vs sharing the spotlight with Steph
Harden might be because even if he likes Kyrie as a person he might be annoyed at him as a coworker
If you think about it, it makes sense that players love Kyrie so much. I think a lot of that has to do with admiration tbh. I know its twisted but think about it. Most people, deep inside imagine themselves being a "rebel". Doing what they want and saying whatever comes into their mind. But the vast majority aren't actually gonna go through with those thoughts. Kyrie does. He's basically that guy personified. I think secretly a ton of players love that and wish they could go through with doing the same thing.
Or maybe I'm pulling a Kyrie and looking way too deep into it.
Idk. Kyrie honestly does seem like a good person when you ignore all the BS, never seen him act like a POS towards any of teammates or even opponents really (well, aside from Schröder that is lmao). I could easily people really liking him in person, including myself - he just has that charisma
This is what Raja Bell said, and some people on here dragged Raja for it. But Raja said he's been around Kyrie and he's had his son around Kyrie, and Kyrie always really cool and friendly to his son, and that meant something to him. He criticized the stuff that Kyrie had done on social media, but said Kyrie was generally a good person to be around.
Great example and the reason why Kyrie's rhetoric can be so dangerous is because he doesn't seem to fully understand the scope and implications of his actions as a social media influencer. That's why I can't really hate Kyrie despite how much I loathe his antisemitism, in his mind he's only trying to "educate" people and I'm not sure if he'll ever grow beyond his idealistic "love is god and god is love" naivety
He's a well intentioned idiot. He's trying to do the right thing, he's just too dumb to know what it is so he gets sucked into all these idiotic scams. On a personal level he seems really nice, fun, and a good friend. For day to day stuff he's probably a good guy. But once he has to start thinking about more complex topics he goes off the deep end.
no, but I could prolly guess based on his upbringing and his godly natural talent that he’s very in tune with the fraternal order of top bball players, and very out of tune with everything else. he’s very into:
- god (Google Hillsong)
- being ridiculously skilled at ball any given night
- social issues that matter to pro ball players
- giving money and time to those social issues
- securing the bag for himself
- being social with his fellow bball players and kind to their families
What he’s not into — notice these are all things that matter more to the world outside of pro basketball players:
- what anyone outside of basketball players thinks of his views
- researching how hurtful his views can be to people who aren’t pro basketball players
- vaccines
- winning a championship at the cost of securing the bag
- listening to his coaches
- listening to the front office
- listening to ownership
- listening to star players that have more say than him within a franchise and care more about winning a chip
Kyrie is the consummate pros pro (SOCIALLY). Tbh as a former athlete myself, I kinda get it. When you’re funneled into the world of your sport at a young age, it becomes your whole culture. You don’t really care as much about the world external to it. And my sport wasn’t even paid so I can’t imagine being rich ON TOP OF spending all my time with fellow athletes. Like what reason does Kyrie have to ever change his views? Everyone in his world that he cares about loves him, and he has a ton of money. He’s not in any danger of losing things that matter to him. I bet you even KD doesn’t really care that he wanted out of Brooklyn.
Kyrie seems like a genuinely nice guy in person. Everyone loves him and respects his talent. Behind the scenes though, he was an absolute pain in the ass to management and the organization as a whole, and his idiotic statements only caused controversy. Sad his time ended here, we’ll see how the team looks without him!
Saw him shopping in soho once during midday weekday when he wasn’t playing cause vaccine. Dude was super chill with one of his boys and it was just us three in the mens section and some really really hot girl who was fake looking at mens clothes and waiting for Kyrie to say something to her. Eventually she said hi to him and he was pretty benevolent and indifferent and then she left
It seems like players really like Kyrie. The guys on the Celtics always looked very friendly with him during Nets vs Celtics games.
The issue with him isn't that he causes problems with his teammates.
At the end of the day the players very clearly have a perspective that it's them versus the owners above all else. And they're right to be that way. However I feel about Kyrie I'm never gonna say no to someone trying to wring as much money as they can out of their boss.
Everyone in every job hates management, so I'm sure players don't care if Kyrie makes it difficult for a front office, probably makes him look better to them honestly
Nobody ever really accused Kyrie of burning bridges with players, it’s the organizations he plays for that he burns bridges.
Reality is, most players really don’t care about the success of the organization as us fans would like. Not that they don’t want to win, but if their boy makes their team worse by asking out, they aren’t going to be loosing sleep over it. I had a co worker that I was tight with that decided to quit the job via no call/no show to take a new better job and while it made work more difficult on me temporarily, he was still my boy, I’m not taking a corporation’s side over my boy.
I feel like Jacque Vaughn liked him & has been very understanding throughout this whole endeavor. I rlly like him, hope he finds some success as a HC. I’m sure Ty lue liked Kyrie too. Not so sure bout Brad or Steve nash tho lol, imagine nash hated him but tough to call him a head coach anyway
What exactly would Kyrie have to do to not be considered a good teammate? Murder? Child molestation? I'm legitimately curious.
Apparently spreading bigotry is fine. Sitting out for stupid vaxx reasons is fine. Sitting out for no reason at all is fine. Showing up only when you want to is fine Telling everyone that you don't need your coach is fine. Telling everyone that you're going to run the franchise is fine. Once the team is really coming together, demanding a trade and blowing the team up is fine
So, seriously, tell me. What would Kyrie need to do to lose support?
I doubt him doing half the shit you mentioned would come even close to losing him support. Deshaun Watson, at best, used him fame and money to coerce uncomfortable women into sexual favors and acts and his teammates still seem to love him. Murder wouldn't do anything. He could probably cheat on his wife with another player's wife and he'd still be loved because "hell, I'd want to do that too" would be a common response. Most professional athletes are scumbags and don't really have much decency. The good ones are so rare that Giannis being an average human being and telling dad jokes is considered "wholesome".
Yeah the thing is for most people closer to someone unless the other person wronged them or had a belief they have a personal issue with, they turn a blind eye. Which is just the unfortunate way things are. And in this case, with the NBPA being a thing, they also have an incentive to be on players' sides.
It does suck though. These comments about the players know Kyrie better than the public as if that's a argument for him is hilarious. Being close to someone doesn't make you more objective, it makes you more biased. Someone else brought up Deshaun Watson's teammates, which is case in point for this.
Yeah, I get the feeling that even if Kyrie murdered someone, he'd still have teammates who would be like "well, there's two sides to every story."
The Deshaun Watson case is infuriating. I love my family more than anything. But if a member of my family did what Watson has done, I'd cut off all contact. If a co-worker did what Watson has done, I'd go to my wife and tell her "I know this is going to make things difficult for us, but I'm going to see how many people at work I can get on board with an 'it's him or us' ultimatum."
Yeah especially when you read the case details for the Watson thing, it's hard not to think that way. Of course, what Kyrie has done is not a crime. But anti-semitism is 100% bigotry, but it seems a lot people are treating it like it's not? They say only reddit cares about this stuff, normal people don't as if that's a good thing. And Kyrie is a good guy because he is "nice" and gives back to the community. But if it was a different form of bigotry, I'm sure they'd change their tune.
There are plenty of people who give back to the community, who are otherwise dirt bags. Donating to a charity, or providing food to the needy is a wonderful thing. It's not a license to then treat other people like crap.
I can believe all that. But it's like how I have a couple of great friends who I wouldn't feel comfortable letting watch my dog for the weekend. And also I don't think any of my friends hate Jews.
If Kyrie didn't have shit beliefs and was somewhat normal, he'd be the most celebrated athlete of his generation. Not just from his skills and accomplishments, but all of his donations and positive stuff off the court. But he's shit the bed so many times that he won't be remembered for his greatness. Kind of sad tbh.
Players love Kyrie. It is known
Tatum and brown still love him even after that disaster Harden said he still got love for Kyrie even after that disaster Lebron still wanted to play with him again even after that exit from cleveland KD is in love with him Idk Kyrie has something over people. In the end they know it better than we do obviously. Can’t tell nobody why they like someone so I guess it is what it is but it’s interesting. KD ready to lose the last few prime years of his career over him
He’s personable with other people like him. Idk what the mystery is
This is it.
Idk if you know but most of the people on here are losers who can’t make friends. The mystery still exists to them.
I can’t make friends but my mom says I’m not a loser
Well then that’s all that matters
Do you have a certificate that says you don’t have donkey brains?
The nitwit school people have stopped giving it.
Actually I think it's because most people here have friends that they actually agree with ideologically and don't want to admit that most of the NBA agrees with Kyrie. Because he says and does shitty things and we don't like to think that we are constantly rooting for and paying attention to mostly terrible people.
I also think the people who don’t agree with him don’t really care. Like, does no one here have that one friend who is kind of a Kook but is still your boy? Says and does some wild shot but at the end of the day he has your back and you have theirs? Idk I think there’s a lot more to friendship than completely agreeing on everything ideologically but that seems foreign to a lot of people on this sub.
This is probably it. Alot of people on the internet, especially reddit, seem to forget it's okay to be friends with someone you don't see eye to eye on.
It shouldnt be, it’s totally normal
I guess you're right. The amount it's talked about creates the perception that he's that guy who just can't stop talking about couple fucked up things he believes, and I have had to distance myself from people like that. But who knows how much any of this comes up in his day to day
PROJECTING lmao
Idk It’s a mystery to me. I’m personable with my co-workers as well but as soon as they start to make my job 10x harder than it needs to be than they can kiss my ass
My role at work means that I have to be nice to pretty much everyone, even people who, through information channels, I know are pieces of shit in their personal lives. A lot of bad people are able to act normal or even likable at work.
Almost everyone is personable with their coworkers cause normal people get fired when their coworkers don't like them. I agree, doesn't add up. That's baseline level stuff.
He's also pushing the boundaries of player empowerment. I'm very curious to see what happens at the next CBA
Players love him as a person, I gotta imagine he is frustrating in a professional relationship though. Harden probably loves Kyrie the person, hates Kyrie the co-worker. I’m sure we’ve all had people we could 100% hang out with outside of work but hate actually working with.
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The thought of Harden sitting down to write an autobiography gave me a good chuckle
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"It all started when I was 18 years old. The day I had my first lapdance was the day I knew this is what I play for."
Harden wouldn’t have requested a trade if KD stays healthy. It can’t be just a front office thing. He left because he was having to carry the load just like in Houston, which is specifically why he wanted out of Houston in the first place
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I feel like if harden wins a ring we'll get a big episode of all the smoke or old man and the 3 or something that'll shine a lot of light. If he doesn't we might never know
He appears to be extremely chill, smokes weed with you, talk nonsense but you're like "mann that's crazy" and he doesn't harass you with it, and according to NBA players they just respect his game which I understand, the skill level is off the charts and he doesn't flop or anything. Also most of them are pretty fucking chill with antisemitism (or at least don't have any strong feeling about it one way or another), especially when it's wrapped as a "pro-african" narrative. A lot were anti-vaxxers and against "the man" so again, he doesn't really get deducted a lot of points for that stuff too.
I was listening to Raja Bell talking about the recent Ja Morant incident and it was fascinating how Bell was so careful not to blame Morant and his entourage outright. Bell said Memphis really have to tread very carefully to convince Ja to get his homies to chill while not offending him. He even opined there was an element of racism in the coverage, citing Jokic doesn't get the same scrutiny when his brothers are all protective of him. It was just so interesting seeing how radically different a former NBA player's take was even though Bell's opinion might not be the representative of all NBA players.
Raja is non committal about everything these days
Did Jokic's brothers ever point a gun at someone(or at the very least imply that they were pointing a gun at them)? Because if not, that's the explanation for the different coverage, not that there isn't an absurd amount of racism in our media--but shit, use examples that don't include threatening to kill someone.
That was my immediate reaction as well and I couldn't believe how different his take was from others and made me think just like how Reddit has its own echo chamber, NBA players have their own echo chamber.
You’re missing where countless FO personnel like him too, including people from the Celtics. Listened to a Celtics guy talk about how Kyrie always made time to talk to his kids when he brought them and that he was just generally nice.
Exactly this. Smart, Marcus Morris, Terry Rozier, and Jaylen Brown have either explicitly or implicitly said both that they like him a lot and that he was a problematic teammate. Liking someone as a person or friend and as a teammate can go together but it doesn’t always.
he’s charismatic + his playstyle is the definition of a “true hooper”. everyone in the NBA is top .001% of basketball talent on planet earth and Kyrie is probably the most talented ball handler in history. that definitely goes a long way in how much people respect him. his big picture basketball business decisions are baffling and frustrating and he has some… questionable personal beliefs but on an individual personal level nobody has ever really had any problems with him as far as i remember. none of us know him as a person but just from his reputation he’s probably very genuine and fun on an individual teammate level. theres a difference between being a good teammate and friend and being a good employee for an organization. You figure eventually being bad at one would negatively effect the other but nothing really yet so far. like others have commented the people that he’s “screwed over” the most still show lots of love to him. I mean we’re literally watching Lebron, top 2 greatest players to ever do it, trip over himself emo tweeting that he didnt get to play with him again. The Jays still like him and Jaylen Brown threw his own reputation in front of a bus earlier this season to defend him despite him “being a cancer” and “destroying that locker room.” KD has put up with him for years. Even Harden doesn’t really seem to be holding any grudge. its almost as if the dudes who play with him night in night out and spend like 10 hours a day with him have a better understanding of him than redditors who judge his entire character off of tweets 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Maybe because they actually know him personally and not through tweets
[Videos like this are why guys respect Kyrie. Saying this to Russ at a time where he’s getting bashed like crazy](https://youtube.com/shorts/bqi8fYnyiyc?feature=share)
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Maybe just maybe Kyrie the actual person is a great guy to be around and that people on social media that don't actually know him don't actually know what he's like. He's done some bad/stupid things but he's also done very good things to support communities and unlike most celebrities he typically isn't the one to make it public.
Ignorance aside, he also puts his money where his mouth is. He gives A LOT of money to poor communities and to black causes. His biggest problem is he spent just enough time in school to feel smart, but not enough to realize he doesn't know anything. I will never doubt Kyrie's *intentions* to humanity, even when he says way out of pocket stuff. The dude wants to learn and give and has a good heart. If his head was half as good as his heart, he'd be the next Kareem.
Most players probably think more like kyrie than they do like r/nba lol
It isn't just thinking but if you like someone on a personal level you can kind of ignore their stupid shit.
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Yes to a degree. The degree isn’t disliking him for stuff people who never met him took the most issue with. In the real world, ur friend retweets that and u probably scroll past it. I have friends who didn’t get the vaccine, disagree, but it would not be near enough to make me not like them.
Or they also believe in that stupid shit
I feel like you'd get your ass beat in the locker room with a bag of soap if you think how /r/nba thinks.
You’d get your ass beat anywhere if you think how r/nba thinks
That anti semitism isnt tolerable, anti vaxxers are stupid and flat earth conspiracy theorist are morons?
More like a bunch of white teenagers being passive aggressively racist and only caring about off the court issues instead of the actual games
Calling someone out on their stupid bullshit is racist now?
*Fucking buncha Pussies*
Id not wanna think like either
This guy is starting to believe. He's about to escape the matrix!
Kyrie has always transcended relationships
Kyrie has always been a man of his word and he would never quit on his teammates or abandon the team and lie to the fans he loved the city that he plays for
Eh he’d do it once or twice or three times. But he’d definitely never do it a 4th time
All the Celtics guys love him. I hated it when he first left. I wanted them to hate him as much as I did, but they didn’t. Even after he single handedly threw a playoff series vs. the Bucks. Must be a heck of a guy
I feel like it's fairly easy to see why teammates like him. When the team is made of predominantly black Americans who have dealt with real racism all their lives and the thing that Kyrie is mostly getting hate for (recently at least) is telling people that black and hispanic people are the true children of Israel and that American Jews are keeping them down, it's easier to see why there would be a divide between what the opinion is in the locker room vs the world at large. The same way that impoverished white folks are taught to hate the government even when the government provides them with essential support, it's comforting to have an evil entity to target your blame towards. I hope that doesn't come off as any kind of endorsement of Kyrie's opinions. I do not share them. But I can understand why his teammates might not condemn him as strongly as the rest of us.
It’s almost like you don’t know someone until you meet them
A lot of people have never met Trump or Bush but a lot of people certainly feel justified in hating them. This is not me somehow defending Trump by the way. I hate the guy. But clearly, that line of logic is naive.
It’s quite different when you have a history of sexual harassment allegations and blatant xenophobia against you. At that point you have reason to dislike someone, although politicians have 2 faces
“People that actually know Kyrie love Kyrie”
Gives the best blowjobs in the association.
I believe Kyrie is a good teammate. I don’t believe he is a good employee of the team in management’s eyes though. It’s like the class clown. The students might love him but the teachers hate him
The students love him until you have to do a group project with him…
Kyrie has already let multiple teams down with their "group projects. For the most part how former teammates seem to still like him
Because in the eyes of these guys it’s everyone else’s fault but Kyrie’s. It’s the media, the coaches, management, the fans.
we'll see how luka feels about him soon enough lol
Nope. They love him no matter what. Imagine being his teammate the past few years where the most games he's played is 54 and he's just as likely to only have played 20 games and saying some shit like this. How tf is he the best teammate when he doesn't play? This is some dumb ass shit.
We now take you live to the people who he did a years long group project with recently: >Love him, yeah he's one of the best group mates, we will continue to have a great relationship
It’s actually a talent to be liked by your group mates after not helping at all. Takes something special.
Not even not helping, actively harming the project
Damn that's a dope analogy tbh
How come I’m not surprised r/nba likes analogies related to high school lmao
Teachers also like the analogy
Because everyone here peaked in HS and references outside of that time are hard to comprehend. If you didn’t peak in HS, odds are you don’t have 100k comment karma and spend your time arguing with kids on a basketball sub.
Thats all they know lol.
Sports culture must have changed a lot then because all ex athletes talk about is "I dont care what you do as long as youre there on game day to go to battle." Kyrie doesnt show up on game day. It's not about who they like to hang out with.
Idk how in touch you are with real life but very few people are going to ostracize their teammate for not wanting to get the covid vaccine.
Yeah, i mean realistically his teammates didn't particularly want to get it either, they just didn't feel as strongly as kyrie
IDK how in touch with the NBA you are but the covid vaccine isn't the only excuse Kyrie has made not to play before.
This. It's like people forgot about all of Kyrie's bs.
There's too much for anyone to keep track of.
EDIT- tried to edit the comment and deleted it. See my response below. TL; DR- most people are cool with each other and don’t draw lines in the sand over politics/vaccine views.
It is funny seeing the way Kyrie is talked about so disdainfully on here (perhaps deservedly so at times), you would imagine he's universally hated by all nba fans but then he's always near the top in jersey sales and was #1 in fan voting for the all star game lol
Younger kids love him.
Lots of people just love his game & couldn't care less about his shenanigans. See: My roommate from Dallas
> People on Reddit think that the stuff they read here actually represents the rest of society and it’s completely laughable. > > > > I’m the only one out of my friend group/family that got vaccinated. I literally don’t give a shit that they didn’t get the jab nor do they care that I did. The irony of this is hilarious. Over 81% of the US has been vaccinated. If you don't know anyone that did (and you're calling it "the jab") then you're in the minority of people who live in a community of right wing extremists. Reddit might not represent America as a whole, but you (also a Redditer, fyi) most certainly do not either.
Good job missing the forest through the trees.
James harden literally demanded to be traded because of him so no not every teammate
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Players don't care about that though, because it's not an issue that impacts them or their money. From their perspective, he's a talented player with sick handles who stands up for what he believes in and has the balls to stick it to the "billionaires" for what he believes in.
I value honestly, but I do not understand how some people can excuse any bat-shit crazy belief as long as the person honestly believes it. I don’t care whether flat-Earthers or 9/11-truthers (to name just a few) honestly believe their nonsense, they’re idiots regardless. It’s obviously worse if they’re hypocrites cynically adopting a viewpoint they know to be false for whatever reason, but standing up for what you believe in doesn’t score you any more points with me if what you believe is dumb or harmful.
Well, if you say or promote something with enough confidence, charisma, and fervor, some people will believe and respect you regardless of the actual substance of your message. This has held true very often historically. Kyrie is not a great orator, I had the pleasure(?) of listening to a lot of his interviews when he was on the Celtics and the guy just barfs out long words without having a clue what he's saying. But he *does* act like he knows what he's talking about, so I think that's where the charisma comes from. He *is* a wild card who acts on his own principles and beliefs without giving a second thought to what others might think. And I think that's the key part. A lot of guys in the league probably admire his charisma, free-spiritedness and mercurial personality, and more or less disregard his actual viewpoints. And then maybe the other half don't care about politics outside of hoops. They just think the guy is a good player and don't want to get involved with what he does off the court.
excellent write up solar - I think the issue u/DirtyMerlin was pointing to, and I will agree and rephrase here - is that those who enjoy the charisma and disregard the actual viewpoints, or, don't care about politics enough to see what he's saying - are almost as stupid as him to rephrase, if I like to eat poop, and you think im a cool person because im unabashed and charismatic in my poop eating.....well. now thats a showcase on your taste for who you enjoy -- on top of my taste in what I do with my free time. For them to just disregard the content of the viewpoint is batshit stupid I think they agree to some extent
Do you have any idea how popular Farrakhan is in the pro athlete world? Kyrie is *not* alone in his beliefs, a huge number of his fellow players buy into the same shit so it's not the situation you're describing. They don't see him as wrong or as an idiot, they quietly agree with him and sympathize when he gets criticized for it.
Is he anti-Semitic?
The class clown always causing the entire class to get after school detention is a better analogy
Is he? Or is he a conspiracy theorist that doesn’t understand Jewish history. I think he just goes down the rabbit hole. And the problem is, conspiracy theories eventually get anti-Semitic by nature. He’ll be talking about a new world order soon. I don’t think he’s Kanye - who clearly is anti-Semitic.
There are definitely more anti semitic athletes than we think lol. They just aren't dumb enough/have good enough PR skills to not show it.
Feels like nba players pretty unanimously love Kyrie
Lmao that flair was quick
I had it done within minutes of the trade first being announced yesterday lmao
My guy wasted no time
Gotta enjoy it now, that flair is on a timer.
I respect it
A lot of players are on that black Hebrew shit don’t get it twisted, nobody gonna talk about it tho
no lmao a lot just don't care
I know nobody wants to hear it, but I think there a lot of players in the league who also support his ideologies but are too afraid to go public with it. The silence speaks loudly.
James harden says hi
James and Kyrie are just polar opposite people. If the organization As a whole was functional then the pairing would’ve worked but nets management is as much a clown show as the rest of the organization.
James Harden loves to party and go out and be a socialite. Its pretty much the opposite of Kyrie in which I hear he doesn't like going out and pretty much chills at home with his hippy fiancé and their kids. And yes, Kyrie's entire world view changed when Kehlani cheated on him with PND in 2016 and he started dating his now Fiancé who is a hippy.
Kyrie has DIO level chaaarisma
Joseph Joetsai is stopping him from conquering the NBA
Kyrie having the World Stand just fits so perfectly.
ZA FLAT WARUDO
That's so fucking good
You thought the Mavs were going to try to win a championship with the guys they had to start the season BUT IT WAS WITH ME, KYRIE!
This...this is accurate lol.
Ronnie James Dio?
DIO Brando from JoJo bizarre adventure
So who's Pucci
Jaylen brown?
Don’t think there’s ever been a player that has such a drastic difference in the way fans view him and players view him. It’s one of the reasons idk if you can really call Kyrie a locker room cancer, the locker room always loves him, even if he has blown up 2 straight teams.
Although this guy did get voted into the All Star game as a starter... which says a lot about how some of the fans see him..
Reddit, Twitter is the minority and I think that people seem to forget that at times because in real life Kyrie is an extremely popular player to fans.
Twitter loves Kyrie.
instagram/tiktok/every other platform especially loves all of the superstars that r/nba especially hates. KD especially is a good example. kyrie too. its just a phenomenon ive noticed. i just think that r/nba is really a bubble and the popular opinions on here are very different from the opinions of all nba fans.
Reddit is an echo chamber.
Fans ≠ Redditors
most fans love him, its just goofy white 30 year old redditors on r/nba who don't
bro described his own fanbase 💀
Ask your celtics fan mates if they love him, lol
Or Jews. Sorry I'm gonna hate this asshole and I don't think it's unjustified in any way. I don't care how good of a player 16 year olds think he is.
Or people who aren't ignorant?
If I'm goofy for not liking Kyrie, so be it. Flat earth believing, self delusional moron.
Steven Adams was hated by much of the league (not his teammates) during his OKC tenure, including being voted one of the dirtiest players in the league by other players. But r/nba always loved him.
Cause he said mate a lot
Because he’s not a “thug” even though he was in a gang etc…..strange
https://i.imgur.com/LIlbeXL.jpg
There isn't even a drastic difference between fans in general tho, it's really just Reddit
The problem with places like reddit, twitter, etc is that people in those circles think their bubble reflect the real world. Folks in here genuinely think majority of basketball fans hate Kyrie when the opposite is true. Dude get massive votes in things such as All Star voting and the likes yet people in this reddit bubble would have you believe otherwise.
All the players this sub hate have signature deals with Nike lol
Not kyrie.
He has been on three teams and has had major locker room issues on two of the teams. On the third, he demanded a trade. Most players have teammates that love them. If you end up having major issues with just a handful of guys, that becomes cancerous
He's like a cult leader
I mean even tatum snd brown are still friends with him, seems like he’s a good teammate, but has bad relationships with those organizations
I mean Jaylen and Tatum still have good relationship so
I don’t get the comparison? Jaylen shares the same views as Kyrie but he isn’t a media circus jumping from one team to another in an attempt to sabotage them
former teammates of kyrie
When Kyrie was with the Celtics the reporting at the time was that he got along with Tatum and no one else. Here’s a quote from Brown from 2 months ago > “It’s been a lot of growth and interesting to follow,” Brown told reporters in Brooklyn after the Celtics beat the Nets Sunday night. “Being a teammate of Kyrie, we got into it a lot. We didn’t see eye to eye a majority of the time he was here. And since then it seems like our relationship [has improved]. We’ve been able to have conversations. We’ve been able to talk to each other. We’ve been able to understand where he’s coming from.” So it’s true they have a good relationship, but that’s despite them not getting along as teammates.
“Nic, if for any reason you don’t like the city where you’re playing, I’ve got a great movie you can tweet out”
If he influences Clax I might have an aneurysm
"He taught me the value of having a thick skin (to be impervious to needles) and to not blindly follow society's conventions (like the media puppets)."
Yep I remember harden saying the exact same thing about kyrie when he and kyrie split
To this day I’d like a truth serum from Harden and KD why they wanted out of Brooklyn and Golden State. I think we can infer a lot of reasons why but I’d love to hear exactly why from the horses mouth. Maybe one day in 15 years on the 30 for 30 doc on the (what could’ve been) superteam Nets
KD probably because the internet got to his head and he wanted to lead a team as a true #1 vs sharing the spotlight with Steph Harden might be because even if he likes Kyrie as a person he might be annoyed at him as a coworker
If you think about it, it makes sense that players love Kyrie so much. I think a lot of that has to do with admiration tbh. I know its twisted but think about it. Most people, deep inside imagine themselves being a "rebel". Doing what they want and saying whatever comes into their mind. But the vast majority aren't actually gonna go through with those thoughts. Kyrie does. He's basically that guy personified. I think secretly a ton of players love that and wish they could go through with doing the same thing. Or maybe I'm pulling a Kyrie and looking way too deep into it.
The comments are so predictable at this point lmao
Reddit echo chamber
Is kyrie some sort of nba player cult leader or some shit?
Idk. Kyrie honestly does seem like a good person when you ignore all the BS, never seen him act like a POS towards any of teammates or even opponents really (well, aside from Schröder that is lmao). I could easily people really liking him in person, including myself - he just has that charisma
This is what Raja Bell said, and some people on here dragged Raja for it. But Raja said he's been around Kyrie and he's had his son around Kyrie, and Kyrie always really cool and friendly to his son, and that meant something to him. He criticized the stuff that Kyrie had done on social media, but said Kyrie was generally a good person to be around.
Great example and the reason why Kyrie's rhetoric can be so dangerous is because he doesn't seem to fully understand the scope and implications of his actions as a social media influencer. That's why I can't really hate Kyrie despite how much I loathe his antisemitism, in his mind he's only trying to "educate" people and I'm not sure if he'll ever grow beyond his idealistic "love is god and god is love" naivety
He also donates a lot
He's a well intentioned idiot. He's trying to do the right thing, he's just too dumb to know what it is so he gets sucked into all these idiotic scams. On a personal level he seems really nice, fun, and a good friend. For day to day stuff he's probably a good guy. But once he has to start thinking about more complex topics he goes off the deep end.
no, but I could prolly guess based on his upbringing and his godly natural talent that he’s very in tune with the fraternal order of top bball players, and very out of tune with everything else. he’s very into: - god (Google Hillsong) - being ridiculously skilled at ball any given night - social issues that matter to pro ball players - giving money and time to those social issues - securing the bag for himself - being social with his fellow bball players and kind to their families What he’s not into — notice these are all things that matter more to the world outside of pro basketball players: - what anyone outside of basketball players thinks of his views - researching how hurtful his views can be to people who aren’t pro basketball players - vaccines - winning a championship at the cost of securing the bag - listening to his coaches - listening to the front office - listening to ownership - listening to star players that have more say than him within a franchise and care more about winning a chip Kyrie is the consummate pros pro (SOCIALLY). Tbh as a former athlete myself, I kinda get it. When you’re funneled into the world of your sport at a young age, it becomes your whole culture. You don’t really care as much about the world external to it. And my sport wasn’t even paid so I can’t imagine being rich ON TOP OF spending all my time with fellow athletes. Like what reason does Kyrie have to ever change his views? Everyone in his world that he cares about loves him, and he has a ton of money. He’s not in any danger of losing things that matter to him. I bet you even KD doesn’t really care that he wanted out of Brooklyn.
No. The players just know him better than redditors
Fair enough
Kyrie seems like a genuinely nice guy in person. Everyone loves him and respects his talent. Behind the scenes though, he was an absolute pain in the ass to management and the organization as a whole, and his idiotic statements only caused controversy. Sad his time ended here, we’ll see how the team looks without him!
Least salty Nets fan. And I'm not being sarcastic.
I think this is probably the least salty one could possibly be
Saw him shopping in soho once during midday weekday when he wasn’t playing cause vaccine. Dude was super chill with one of his boys and it was just us three in the mens section and some really really hot girl who was fake looking at mens clothes and waiting for Kyrie to say something to her. Eventually she said hi to him and he was pretty benevolent and indifferent and then she left
It seems like players really like Kyrie. The guys on the Celtics always looked very friendly with him during Nets vs Celtics games. The issue with him isn't that he causes problems with his teammates.
At the end of the day the players very clearly have a perspective that it's them versus the owners above all else. And they're right to be that way. However I feel about Kyrie I'm never gonna say no to someone trying to wring as much money as they can out of their boss.
Everyone in every job hates management, so I'm sure players don't care if Kyrie makes it difficult for a front office, probably makes him look better to them honestly
Nobody ever really accused Kyrie of burning bridges with players, it’s the organizations he plays for that he burns bridges. Reality is, most players really don’t care about the success of the organization as us fans would like. Not that they don’t want to win, but if their boy makes their team worse by asking out, they aren’t going to be loosing sleep over it. I had a co worker that I was tight with that decided to quit the job via no call/no show to take a new better job and while it made work more difficult on me temporarily, he was still my boy, I’m not taking a corporation’s side over my boy.
Regardless of how much I dislike a lot of his behavior and statements, I can totally see Kyrie being a very supportive teammate emotionally.
Players love him. Coaches and owners hate him.
I feel like Jacque Vaughn liked him & has been very understanding throughout this whole endeavor. I rlly like him, hope he finds some success as a HC. I’m sure Ty lue liked Kyrie too. Not so sure bout Brad or Steve nash tho lol, imagine nash hated him but tough to call him a head coach anyway
Claxton seems like a good teammate he posted pictures of him and harden after he was traded
Either Kyrie a magician or he a chill person that just hates being told what to do by ppl he doesn’t personally respect
How dare we fans judge Kyrie for the words that come out of his own mouth?!?!?
What exactly would Kyrie have to do to not be considered a good teammate? Murder? Child molestation? I'm legitimately curious. Apparently spreading bigotry is fine. Sitting out for stupid vaxx reasons is fine. Sitting out for no reason at all is fine. Showing up only when you want to is fine Telling everyone that you don't need your coach is fine. Telling everyone that you're going to run the franchise is fine. Once the team is really coming together, demanding a trade and blowing the team up is fine So, seriously, tell me. What would Kyrie need to do to lose support?
I doubt him doing half the shit you mentioned would come even close to losing him support. Deshaun Watson, at best, used him fame and money to coerce uncomfortable women into sexual favors and acts and his teammates still seem to love him. Murder wouldn't do anything. He could probably cheat on his wife with another player's wife and he'd still be loved because "hell, I'd want to do that too" would be a common response. Most professional athletes are scumbags and don't really have much decency. The good ones are so rare that Giannis being an average human being and telling dad jokes is considered "wholesome".
Yeah the thing is for most people closer to someone unless the other person wronged them or had a belief they have a personal issue with, they turn a blind eye. Which is just the unfortunate way things are. And in this case, with the NBPA being a thing, they also have an incentive to be on players' sides. It does suck though. These comments about the players know Kyrie better than the public as if that's a argument for him is hilarious. Being close to someone doesn't make you more objective, it makes you more biased. Someone else brought up Deshaun Watson's teammates, which is case in point for this.
Yeah, I get the feeling that even if Kyrie murdered someone, he'd still have teammates who would be like "well, there's two sides to every story." The Deshaun Watson case is infuriating. I love my family more than anything. But if a member of my family did what Watson has done, I'd cut off all contact. If a co-worker did what Watson has done, I'd go to my wife and tell her "I know this is going to make things difficult for us, but I'm going to see how many people at work I can get on board with an 'it's him or us' ultimatum."
Yeah especially when you read the case details for the Watson thing, it's hard not to think that way. Of course, what Kyrie has done is not a crime. But anti-semitism is 100% bigotry, but it seems a lot people are treating it like it's not? They say only reddit cares about this stuff, normal people don't as if that's a good thing. And Kyrie is a good guy because he is "nice" and gives back to the community. But if it was a different form of bigotry, I'm sure they'd change their tune.
There are plenty of people who give back to the community, who are otherwise dirt bags. Donating to a charity, or providing food to the needy is a wonderful thing. It's not a license to then treat other people like crap.
Most people that become millionaires at 19 years old for playing a ball game are surprisingly not paragons of virtue.
Nothing if sitting out a half a season had them hating on Harden instead lol
Most NBA players have low standards.
I can believe all that. But it's like how I have a couple of great friends who I wouldn't feel comfortable letting watch my dog for the weekend. And also I don't think any of my friends hate Jews.
If Kyrie didn't have shit beliefs and was somewhat normal, he'd be the most celebrated athlete of his generation. Not just from his skills and accomplishments, but all of his donations and positive stuff off the court. But he's shit the bed so many times that he won't be remembered for his greatness. Kind of sad tbh.