Nets star Kyrie Irving embroiled himself in another controversy recently after seemingly promoting a movie full of antisemitic tropes. Photo: Getty Images.
Last week, I wrote an article on how much of a mess the Los Angeles Lakers have become.
In the Lakers’ defence, at least their trials and tribulations are confined to the sport of basketball.
The Brooklyn Nets are almost as messy as the Lakers are on the floor. Away from it, they’re taking dysfunction to a whole new level.
Before we get into all of the off-court drama, let’s take a look at their on-court woes.
Wednesday’s meek surrender at home to the Chicago Bulls dropped the Nets to 2-5, though they’ve recovered somewhat (4-6 at the time of writing) with some, ahem, distraction out of the way.
It’s worth noting, given the myriad long-term absentees that the Nets are having to reintegrate (Ben Simmons, Joe Harris, Seth Curry and even Kyrie Irving to an extent), it’s a touch unfair to grade the Nets this early.
Realistically they’ll need a good 25 to 30 games under their belts before we can pass definitive judgement.
Right now, through? Brooklyn just doesn’t work as a basketballing entity.
Despite the attacking talent up and down the roster, the Nets offence has been hijacked by Simmons’ complete lack of assertiveness.
Even if/when he plays like a Draymond Green-style short roller, teams simply lay off of him and take away his passing options, knowing that he doesn’t want to go to the hoop.
In the Nets’ recent loss to Dallas, several Mavericks tried to convince officials that a fouled Simmons was in the act of shooting (which he was not) such is the Australian’s fear of shooting the ball.
Simmons isn’t back to his All-Defence best yet, either. That may come with time; it may not. Either way, the issue is roster fit.
Simmons is big and strong enough to bang bodies with power forwards and some centres, but he is in no way a feared rim protector, never averaging so much as a block per game at any point in his career.
That’s where Nicolas Claxton comes in – he’s a wonderful shot blocker who dovetails beautifully with what prime Simmons brings to the defensive table.
Unfortunately, though, their fit on offence is horrific. Neither can shoot (though at least Claxton tries to) which jams up the Nets’ spacing.
Kevin Durant is – once again – playing out of his mind, but that leaves the Nets fortunes falling onto the shoulders of a 34-year-old with miles on the tyres. This wasn’t what he envisioned when joining the team.
Recently, the news came out that head coach Steve Nash was fired (personally, I’d like to think he quit and that general manager Sean Marks offered to fire him so that he could be paid out in full as a thank you for putting up with all of this) after growing visibly more frustrated with his lot in life.
There is no way to accurately gauge Nash’s first stint as a head coach.
Under his watch the Nets had literally the best offence ever put on an NBA floor, but was that down to the talents of ‘KD’, Irving and James Harden? Or was it Nash’s ability to knit it all together?
Also under Nash, the Nets exhibited one of the worst cultures in living memory. Was that due to the, let’s call them idiosyncrasies, of his stars? Or is it Nash’s inability to rein in his charges?
The Nets are now reportedly looking to replace Nash with suspended Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka, confirming that as a club they disregard both Jews (more on that below) and allegedly women.
Whilst Udoka’s force of personality would no doubt drag that locker room back into line, he comes with a reasonable amount of recent baggage, himself. It’s recently come to light that apparent ‘strong voices’ are urging the Nets hierarchy to steer clear of the talented but controversial coach.
Durant, of course, made it clear in the off-season that he wanted Nash gone. To that end: mission accomplished.
It will be interesting to see if the other man in KD’s sights –Marks – makes it through the season. In hiring Udoka, and all that he brings to the table, I was moved to recall this:
With all of that drama covered (takes a deep breath and a shot of whisky), let’s move onto the rather prominent elephant in the room: Kyrie Irving.
Long a conduit between the general NBA fan and radical conspiracy theories (like this, this and this), Irving has outdone himself with his recent promotion of the movie Hebrew to Negroes: Wake Up Black America that boosts, amongst other things, antisemitism.
I won’t go into detail about the film as I couldn’t do a better job than what Jon Blistein at Rolling Stone did here. And from this point forward, I’ll simply refer to it as the film.
Irving’s flat-earth dalliance was quirky and kind of fun, in its own way. At least he later apologised for it.
His vaccination stance was at best irresponsible but there is a very vocal minority that for some reason agree with him.
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Promoting Alex Jones is bizarre and more than a bit dicey. Propagating this film is outright dangerous.
In a recent post-game press conference, ESPN’s Nick Friedell went back and forth with Irving over his (since deleted – though not after a lot of hand wringing) tweet promoting the film, the crux of which was: Irving acknowledged that he has a platform, before less than 60 seconds later saying that his platform didn’t exist and was simply a myth made up by the press; that tweeting a link to the film doesn’t necessarily mean he was promoting said film; refused to acknowledge that people will see his tweet as an implicit promotion of the film; refused to apologise for the tweet, in the process making himself out to be the victim.
Irving has since confirmed that he has in fact watched the film, eliminating any possibility of him blindly tweeting about something that he may not have fully understood and thus also doing away with any benefit of the doubt that Irving may have carried.
Just as startling was Irving’s defiance on this issue. Instead of apologising if the tweet caused offence (the classic non-apology apology route) or at the very least deflecting the question, Irving doubled down: “I’m not going to stand down on anything I believe in … I’m only going to get stronger because I’m not alone. I have a whole army around me.”
Irving doesn’t specifically call for violence, but that last statement is frightening. There are enough deranged people out there who hold similar views to Irving that are just waiting for one of their ‘heroes’ to give the order, implied or otherwise.
On the off chance that one of those hate-filled individuals that have seen Irving’s statements doesn’t take it as a literal call to arms, his actions still extend and, in the minds of some, validate their own views and vilification of the Jewish people.
As a black man who has at times taken on the role of social justice warrior, Irving should understand better than most the power of his tweet.
That at a bare minimum it promotes a falsehood about a people based on nothing but their ancestry and all of the dangers that come along with that.
Given Irving plays basketball every day alongside a man named David Duke, you would think this concept might be front and centre to him.
Irving pushed back on Friedell and other reporters in his presser, asking: “Did I do anything illegal? Did I hurt anybody? Did I harm anybody?”
To answer: no, he did nothing illegal. Irving’s actions do hurt people, however. Be it very publicly or via the quieter casual racism that particular ethnic and religious groups (amongst others) are subjected to on a daily basis.
The basketball-going public are already making their feeling heard. At the Nets home game against Indiana earlier this week a series of front-row fans donned their yarmulkes and t-shirts bearing the statement ‘fight antisemitism’.
Basketball fans attending a Brooklyn game send a strong message to Irving. Picture: AP.
A Jewish friend of mine – a Nets fan since moving to the States from Australia at the height of the Jason Kidd-era New Jersey Nets – who frequents Nets games with his children told me that he “just can’t be a Nets fan right now” and that he was unlikely to attend a home game again whilst Irving remained on roster.
These are good starts – if nothing else, Irving’s tweet reinforces the concept of people power.
Ultimately, it’s how the Nets and the NBA themselves respond to this that will prove fascinating.
The NBA banned Donald Sterling and has effectively pushed Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver out the door for their own racist acts. Kryie, though, isn’t an owner. Losing him to the league will make a very real difference to the on-court product and because of that, expect the league to take a different approach.
As it stands, the Nets look to have done the league’s bidding for them, suspending Irving without pay until he fulfils a series of team mandated requirements, including…
– Apologising for and condemning the film he has promoted
– Making a $500,000 (US) donation to anti-hate causes
– Complete sensitivity training
– Complete antisemitic training
– Meeting with Jewish community leaders
– Meeting with Nets owner Joe Tsai to demonstrate his understanding of the matter
It’s interesting that the Anti-defamation League has already publicly rejected Irving’s donation due to Irving’s lack of accountability on the matter. Given that explicit lack of accountability, will the other measures the team have placed upon Irving be worth it?
Can Irving be, for want of a better word, rehabilitated? Can he become more educated on the matter? Would that even help, given it might just provide grist to Irving’s conspiratorial mill? Will the team or the league institute a ban of some sort? If so, what sort of precedent does that set?
Certainly, Irving’s sponsors can take action. Nike have already cut ties with the increasingly controversial point guard, much like Adidas (among others) recently has with the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
There are complexities in the relationship between Jewish people and Black people that as a middle-aged White man, I simply will never fully understand. That said, engagement and discussion should be encouraged. Education should be offered and enlightened views promoted.
Kyrie Irving’s views are clearly not enlightened. They have, however, been widely promoted.
Irving will surely claim that under the banner of free speech he can promote whatever the hell he pleases. In a broad sense, I agree – free speech should be protected. Free speech, however, doesn’t mean one is free from consequence.
The consequences of Irving’s actions – both to others and to himself – remain to be seen.
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