Kyrie Irving came after the media yesterday in a rant that was posted to Twitter. After being eliminated in a sweep by the Boston Celtics, Kyrie was feeling a bit defensive, especially since many have been calling his skills and his commitment to basketball into question. With that being said, Kyrie made the claim that the media makes billions of dollars off of his name and that they are hell-bent on slandering him.
"When I see my name or my brothers/sisters names getting spun through the media, I refer to all my research about who they are. Their job is to CONTROL PUBLIC PERCEPTION, all while profiting off discussing, discrediting, and disrespecting people’s lives for entertainment," Irving wrote. "I send shots at the puppet masters, not the puppets. All puppets do is run around society, trying to gain popularity and state opinions. What a life! My name is worth billions to these media corporations. My brothers and sisters who deal with this know exactly what I mean."
On First Take yesterday, Stephen A. Smith said that he would be coming for Kyrie. The show was covering the NFL Draft that day so they decided not to go in-depth on the whole issue. Today, however, Smith delivered an impressive rant in which he called Irving "delusional."
“We are witnessing one of the most delusional athletes in American history,” Smith said. “He is lost. He is so big on telling everybody else they’re lost. Kyrie is also slick. Because he’s trying to get away with something I’m not going to allow him to get away from.
“You can try to paint this issue, Kyrie, into anything you want. What it comes down to and what everybody is focusing on is you don’t want to show up for work. You want to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, how you want to do it, while you’ve got your hand out for somebody else’s money. And then when you get called on it, we’re the peons. We’re the ones who are puppets. So before you excoriated us. Now you are pitying us. Because what you want to do is highlight the puppet masters who you are worth billions to. You’re not worth billions, bro. Millions, yes. Billions, no. That’s delusional. You gave that up years ago.”
These are some pretty harsh words, however, Smith has always gone this hard at Kyrie. At this point, it is just something fans should come to expect from Stephen A.
Let us know what you thought of the rant, in the comments down below.
