Over the years, Kyrie Irving has received a lot of flack from fans and the media for the way he goes about things. Whether it was his departure from Cleveland or his exodus from Boston, people always have to comment on the way Irving does things. Perhaps the most recent example of this was when Irving was trying to get players not to go to the Orlando bubble. It was a highly-publicized story that had the media turn against Kyrie in the most visceral way possible.
During an appearance on the Play For Keeps podcast, Irving's teammate Kevin Durant spoke on the way people speak on Kyrie and whether or not he is truly as misunderstood as some people claim.
"What does, like, misunderstood mean?" Durant said. "The truth sometimes can hurt a lot of people. When you tell the raw truth, especially in this society, it's frowned upon. Kyrie tells it how it is. There's no sugarcoating." Durant then went on to talk about Irving's meetings with the players regarding the bubble and how it wasn't just Irving who had concerns. As Durant claims, the media just used Irving as a scapegoat.
"In this situation with the NBPA, he wasn't the only one that had a problem with what was potentially going to happen in the bubble. Like, everybody had concerns," Durant said. "But obviously, he's Kyrie—the biggest one—and that's going to sell papers. At this time, especially during the pandemic, nobody making money, so you get an opportunity to get some clicks, it's easy to use Kyrie. But it's 80, 90 players who had the same questions he had."
While Kyrie is one of the most talented point guards in the league, these stories continue to follow him and next year, he will have to do a lot in order to silence the critics. With the return of KD, that task will be just a tad easier.