Irving's game is beyond his words

As Dallas moves to the NBA Finals, Kyrie has put his flaky side on hold.

Bobby Fischer played chess, not checkers, but mostly he played with heads, his own and all those within a 100-mile radius.

He said his opponents were trying to poison his food. He said TV cameras, which he and he alone could lure to a chess match, made too much noise, when of course they make no noise at all. When told he should see a psychiatrist, Fischer said such a doctor should pay for the privilege of dealing with such an unusual mind. In later years he put out anti-Semitic propaganda, and applauded the 9/11 attacks, and was seen riding L.A. city buses for hours, with his pocket chess set, playing and replaying his moves.

With all that, there was only one person to choose to win a chess match that would decide your life, and that was Fischer. Idiosyncrasy is often the first cousin of talent.

Kyrie Irving is a high-functioning human being, certainly no Fischer, but part of the basketball world got caught up in the one oar that he didn’t have in the water, and forgot the magnificence of the boat.

When the Brooklyn Nets traded Irving to the Dallas Mavericks during the 2022-23 season, a Fort Worth columnist said it wouldn’t work because Irving was “crazeeeee.” Irving was famous for opining that the world might be flat. More crucially, he had refused to get vaccinated for Covid-19 and was prohibited from playing home games by the city of New York. At first the Nets decided he wouldn’t play anywhere, then allowed him to go on the road, which made no sense from a public health standpoint.

Even more crucially, Irving tweeted a link to a documentary called “Hebrews To Negroes: Wake Up America” that claimed Hebrew Israelites, who are Black, were actually the chosen people, not Jews. Irving was asked, point-blank, if he was an anti-Semite and cryptically replied, “I cannot be anti-Semitic if I know where I came from.” He later said he was talking about north Jersey, where he grew up. The Nets suspended him anyway.

He had theories about JFK’s assassination and the moon landing, of course. During the 2020 bubble playoffs, he wanted to organize a boycott to protest police brutality, shortly after he bought a house for George Floyd’s family. The Nets clearly wanted him to stay in his lane when Irving couldn’t be confined to one road atlas. Instead of signing him long-term they traded him to Dallas, and when the Mavericks missed the playoffs and the play-in last season, people theorized that his presence would force Luka Doncic to demand his own trade. “He has helped disband the Nets, cost himself tens of millions in endorsements, lost countless fans, and in the final coup de grace may help sink the entire Mavericks franchise,” intoned a New York magazine author.

Despite that solemn proclamation, the Mavericks scrambled to the surface. On Thursday, they will shake the water out of their ears and open the NBA Finals against Boston. Irving and Doncic each scored 36 points in Game 5, as Dallas clinched the Western Conference Finals, over Minnesota.

TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy, who usually dampens the hype, repeatedly called Irving and Doncic the most talented offensive backcourt in the history of the NBA. Yes, he’s aware Steph Curry and Klay Thompson played together, as did Jerry West-Gail Goodrich, Bob Cousy-Bill Sharman and Walt Frazier-Earl Monroe. But Irving is averaging 22.8 points and hitting 42.1 percent of his 3-pointers, and Doncic, who was the league’s leading scorer despite the torpedo alongside him, is averaging 28.8 points with 9.6 rebounds and 8.8 assists. Dallas has run through the Clippers, Oklahoma City and Minnesota with no need for a Game 7.

And, at least in his public appearances, Irving has seemed relaxed and happy, and not particularly uptight about his return to Boston, where the fans would push him into the harbor like British tea if they could.

Irving signed with Boston two years after he and LeBron James teamed up to win the 2016 NBA title in Cleveland. Two of his new teammates were 19-year-old Jayson Tatum and a 21-year-old Jaylen Brown. The Celtics won 55 and 49 games in Irving’s two years there, but he was hurt during the 2017 playoffs and went 6 for 21 when Milwaukee eliminated Boston the next year. He was depressed upon the death of his grandfather, who was the model for his “Uncle Drew” Nike commercials, and he had trouble connecting with teammates, or being the alpha Celtic. Irving has always been more comfortable as the “1-B,” or the near-equal sidekick. He’s never played with a Lone Ranger that’s on Doncic’s current level, at least offensively.

Irving permanently antagonized Boston when he dragged his foot over the leprechaun logo, as Brooklyn swept Boston in 2021, He also yelled at T.D. Garden fans, and claimed he heard racial epithets in kind. It’s likely the Garden fans will quickly despise Doncic as well, if he continues to send unofficial records for F-words, and MF-words, directed at opponents. In the playoffs the Mavericks are 7-2 on the road.

With the exception of his anti-vax position, Irving’s deeds have been far less problematic than his words. When he got to Dallas he dropped $45,000 into a GoFundMe account that benefited a school in Nigeria and an orphanage in Ghana, where a sports complex will later bear his name. He volunteered to raise money for WNBA players who were being disadvantaged by the pandemic. He has stood with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in South Dakota as it protests an oil pipeline; his mother Elizabeth, who died when Kyrie was four, was born into that tribe.

A coach like Phil Jackson would have lived with, even reveled in, Irving’s various disruptions. None of them change the fact that Irving is more comfortable with a basketball in his hand than anyone else in the game, that he’s an unerring, either-handed finisher in the lane, that he turns every one-on-one perimeter matchup into a night at the Improv. You normally do not get to the NBA Finals, let alone win, without at least one surpassing player. Minnesota had the best defense in the league by almost any measure, and Dallas shot 50 percent overall in the series, 38 percent from three. Irving and Doncic combined to shoot 48 percent and average 59.4 of Dallas’ 111.4 points per game.

We’ve tightened our ears to what our athletes say, primarily because they’re conditioned, by their handlers and sponsors, not to say much. Certainly the vessels of their conversation, on social media, aren’t equipped for anything complex. You might not agree with Harrison Butker’s opinions about a woman’s place, but he surely has the right to deliver them. When Bill Walton died Monday, some remembered how he marched and demonstrated, even though he hadn’t yet found his actual voice. Others remembered that the real royal family of sports, including Jim Brown and Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, mounted rooftops to recommend racial and economic justice. But today’s moneyed stars, even with far less to lose, have far less in mind.

Irving’s advocates say he’s a victim of his own curiosity. His critics say he should consider who he’s influencing. The rest of us should choose whether to watch him play or listen to him speculate. Only one of those choices is irresistible.