04-19-2024, 12:24 PM
(04-19-2024, 12:14 PM)SleepingHero Wrote: The Brooklyn thing was multi-layered. First he was injured his entire first year there. Same with KD. No one cared because KD was rehabbing his achilles and the team wasn't great anyways. But obviously if you're being paid a max contract and aren't playing, fans aren't going to be kind.
2nd year COVID happened. And Kyrie refused the vaccine. Without getting into personal opinions, the BRK front office forced every player to get it or else they wouldn't play for the team. Kyrie indignantly refused. Then New York City said unvaxxed players on traveling teams could play, but not players from their home team...??? Made zero sense. Kyrie felt that the New York media painted him as a devil and that the BRK front office threw him under the bus. Fans of the team made him out to be a pariah because of his personal beliefs and just the dialogue around COVID was toxic at best.
3rd year started off with Kyrie tweeting a link to a movie on Amazon about how the Holocaust never happened, and that Jews of today aren't the real Jews. That was all the media needed to attack Kyrie and blow it up as much as they could. Don't get me wrong. He was 100% wrong to be promoting such a film, but the way the media pounced was vicious. Mind you this was at the exact same time Kanye went off on his own tirade about the Jews and Kyrie somehow got caught up into the same conversation (that he kind of put himself in). BRK then banned him and said he needs to apologize with an essay AND donate money to Jewish organizations before he could be considered to be allowed to come back and play. A punishment that resembles what high schoolers have to do when they cheat on an exam. I still remember players around the league saying what BRK was making Kyrie do was outlandish and ridiculous.
Kyrie isn't a saint in all of this. He added fuel to the fire with that movie link he tweeted out. He has some really whacky views. I really dislike his apparent denial of the holocaust. But the New York media AND the Brooklyn front office did everything in their power to destroy the guys image because he didn't align with their views.
Now this is a gross oversimplification of the timeline and there are a lot of nuances here.
I for one am glad Kyrie feels like he can be himself in Dallas and that there hasn't been any PR nightmare of an issue.
SH, I think that's perfect representation of the events. But I begin to wonder how much I actually assumed. For instance you stated that you "really dislike his apparent denial of the Holocaust." You correctly added the word "apparent". I don't think he's actually ever said he denies the Holocaust... but we assume it. How much did we assume that's in error? Most of what we assume is, sadly, from Twitter.
I don't want to take this thread into a rabbit hole. What's really important is how much of a leader he projects in these interviews.