Kyrie Irving's Greater Finals Performance
Essay: On Sonhood and Rewriting Legacies
On the opening night of the NBA 2017-18 season, we saw Batman vs Robin. The Vice President of NBA Scheduling knew he crafted cinema when he scheduled the Kyrie Irving-led Boston Celtics to face King James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Just two seasons prior, Kyrie and LeBron brought Cleveland their first NBA Championship, astonishingly defeating the 73-win Golden State Warriors after being down 3-1 in the series. Throughout the series, Kyrie put on a masterful display of his skills, including a 41-point effort in Game 5 and the infamous go-ahead three-pointer over Stephen Curry to win the Championship, bailing out King James—Ray Allen style.
October 17, 2017, in Cleveland, the prodigal son came home for a visit to prove he was the man now. During the final 8 seconds of the game, a three-point attempt from Jaylen Brown ricocheted off the back rim. The crowd held their breath as the ball deflected off LeBron’s hand while trying to clear it out, ending up in Kyrie’s possession on the wing. In a scenario made for movies, LeBron ran frantically to defend Kyrie's shot, forcing him to pump-fake and take a side-step three. It would’ve been the moment of the season if it went in. The shot was all net but short, the buzzer rang, and then time froze. All eyes were on post-game salutations. Would LeBron – who has a special handshake with all of his favorite teammates – dap up his former running mate? Before Bron could utter what set you claim, he and Kyrie completed their dap and embraced as LeBron palmed the crown of Kyrie’s head. Once they separated amidst departure, LeBron patted Kyrie’s head, then Kyrie patted LeBron’s head, and to get his final “get back” LeBron patted Kyrie’s head one last time before they went their separate ways. It was an NBA moment I will never forget. An act of “fake love” masked as a moment of truce.
To touch a Black man’s head. It’s an act typically reserved for the trusted caretakers of cranium molding and head hair enhancement—parents, parental figures, barbers, hairdressers, and maybe boo-thang. Relinquishing the consent for another Black man to touch another Black man’s dome means there is love between the two and a yearning for a brotherly connection that disarms masculinity at that moment. Father/son pictures of dads palming their young son’s head signify lineal connection, an eternal bond, a congenial attachment everchanging. Patting or tapping the head is a different language, usually meant to say, “Keep your head,” but LeBron’s last tap to Kyrie was different. It was a clear message that he was trying to “son” Kyrie, a patronizing act establishing hierarchy.
In 2015, during Kyrie’s tenure with the second coming of LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers, different media outlets spun a narrative of young Kyrie needing to be molded into a leader. He was seen as naive, someone who feigned wisdom by the media. Kyrie only played four games at Duke before getting drafted as the first overall pick in the 2011 draft. He also won the 2012 Rookie of The Year award after only playing 51 games for a 21-45 Cavelier team. Despite his crafty handling skills and knack to get a bucket, the team’s lack of secondary options held them back. The media painted Kyrie as a talented young buck who needed help leading a team to the Promise Land. In their mind, who better to fill that role than LeBron James?
It went as far as a reporter asking Kyrie if LeBron played a “parental role” to him and his teammates. “I have one father. That’s my dad, Drederick Irving,” said an annoyed Irving. “But for us, in terms of learning the nuances of the game, and also how to win, and how to carry ourselves off the court, I feel he has been a great influence in that role.” It was the beginning of the end for Kyrie and LeBron’s complicated relationship. Kyrie didn’t need LeBron to fill that role.
There comes a time when a son feels the inevitable urge to step out on their own, forge their path, and blaze a new trail. Kyrie decided to do that when he requested a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers. Loud-mouth and professional instigator Stephen A. Smith claimed Kyrie Irving had enough of being seen as James' “son” and wanted to finally become the head of a “family” himself. There were clues that Kyrie would leave Cleveland. Kyrie alluded to his stance of playing second fiddle to LeBron during the 2017 NBA Finals:
“Having just a tremendously great player like that come to your team, and you see yourself being one of those great players eventually, and then he ends up joining it, and then now you have to almost take a step back and observe,” Irving said. “Finding that balance is one of the toughest things to do because you have so much belief and confidence in yourself... Selfishly, I always wanted to just show everyone in the whole entire world exactly who I was every single time.”
He would later request a trade during the 2017 off-season, ultimately landing with the Boston Celtics.
There’s a scene in He Got Game where a young Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen) plays one-on-one against his dad, Jake (Denzel Washington), late into the night on the courts of Coney Island Houses. Jake is relentless in playing against his young son, not allowing Jesus to score easy buckets. Jake’s hand-checking, the blocked shots, and insistent trash talk frustrated Jesus, ultimately making him quit. Jake was trying to teach his son a lesson – nothing would be given to you. Many sons experience the “break him down to build him up” lesson at the expense of a moment of hatred that plunges itself deep into the brain's hippocampus.
Kyrie’s dad, Drederick Irving, also had his time on the hardwood. As a kid from Mitchel housing projects in the Bronx, N.Y., he had to navigate a tough neighborhood to survive but used basketball as a vehicle to get an education. He compiled a hall-of-fame career while playing basketball for the Boston University Terriers in the 80s, achieving the honor of having his No. 11 jersey retired immediately upon graduation. A Boston legend. He participated in free agent tryouts for the Boston Celtics but, in the long run, didn’t make the roster. Drederick went on to play professionally for the Bulleen Boomers in Melbourne, Australia, averaging 30 ppg during the ‘92 season. Kyrie would later be born in Australia in 1992 and the dream transferred down the bloodline. Like father, like son.
In an ESPN interview, Drederick described Kyrie’s inherent knack for basketball. “I consider myself a good man," Drederick once told Kyrie, "but I want you to be a better one.” Drederick did things the old-school way. No shortcuts. No handouts. “I was a coach’s son, still am a coach’s son; if you know, you know what that means,” said Irving. “My dad was extremely tough on me, just to kind of break me down to build me up.” There’s a theme of dads being hard on their sons for fear of their sons learning lessons the hard way from someone who doesn’t love them. The hardness gets stored as pain, yielding destruction. To the sons of hard fathers, forgive them if you can. Cry tears of confusion if you must. But by all means, don’t quit loving yourself. We have each other if we allow it. Many sons want to follow in their father’s footsteps, a journey that wouldn’t be possible without the other many sons we meet along the way.
Kyrie has experienced a complex journey since that game in Cleveland. Although his basketball prowess never declined, he became more known for his role in team incoherence and antics off the court. Kyrie sought to be the veteran leader of a Celtics team that possessed two young playmakers, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. The pairing seemed like a good fit, but it was short-lived.
They would end up losing to the Cavaliers during the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals, and Kyrie’s ability to lead a team was questioned, especially after being absent during Game 7 of the series.
At the beginning of the next season, in his final contract year with the Celtics, he was pandered with questions from the media—Would he come back? On October 4, 2018, Kyrie told reporters, “If you guys will have me back, I plan on re-signing here next year”. His tune changed at the beginning of 2019. “The young guys don’t know what it takes to be a championship-level team," Irving said. The following season, he was gone.
Kyrie would be traded to the Brooklyn Nets, teaming up with Kevin Durant and James Harden. A new “Big Three” to rule the Eastern Conference, or so we thought. It was supposed to be a new beginning, but turmoil followed him. During his tenure with the Nets, in no particular order, Kyrie broke COVID-19 protocols, refused to get the vaccine, only played in road games because of said refusal, shared an Alex Jones video on social media, tweeted a xenophobic documentary, got suspended because of said documentary, got swept by the Celtics in the playoffs, and got dropped by Nike. When it rains, it pours, my mom would say.
A time comes when we spiral out of control and lose our balance—a domino effect of bad decisions digging us deeper and deeper into despair. During Kyrie’s time in Brooklyn, it was clear that he still had some growing up to do, but as much as the self-inflicted bad kept piling on top of him, he continued to hold on to something–sonhood.
Sonhood is a condition that follows sons from birth all the way to our inevitable end. The expectation to continue the bloodline is thrust upon us, and the responsibility to live up to our familial predecessors' wildest dreams is housed in our subconscious. For some, sons are challenged with breaking curses passed down from generation to generation, curses we had nothing to do with. If time, opportunity, and love are on our side, we then decide if we want to evolve into fatherhood, but sonhood never leaves us. We often box ourselves into two camps – offspring or no offspring – wanting to be the father you wished you had or not wanting to impart the trauma you experienced as a child. I believe Kyrie chose a third camp. A combination of the two. It’s possible.
The beam of hope that cut through the abundance of Kyrie’s issues in Brooklyn was the birth of his two sons.
In a father/son relationship, a lot of debt accrues, and there are too many emotional expenses. The father hopes that the lessons pay off, but it’s a risk. The cost of protecting a young Black man is so high. Our dads want us to “make it,” to be “better than them” when we grow up, and too many answers of “my dad was a tough man.” If we’re lucky, the older we get, the interest rates decrease, and the hardiness softens and the debt gets cleared. We’ve always started life in the red. I pray that, with each generation, the deficit gets smaller and smaller. I pray that one day, we will start in black.
Kyrie requested a trade from Brooklyn to begin anew in Dallas in 2023, joining young All-Star Luka Dončić. It was rumored that he would join LeBron James in Los Angeles; their relationship mended sometime amidst all the conspiracy theories. “Me and Bron have grown as human beings,” Irving said. “He’s always gonna be my brother… But my focus is here,” referring to Dallas. None of the theatrics followed him, and there were no false narratives of his incapability to lead a team. People questioned his growth as a human being, but he would quickly put his doubters to shame.
The 2024 NBA finals featured the Dallas Mavericks vs. the Boston Celtics. The season before, the Dallas Mavericks were the 11th seed in the West. It was a complete 180 for the Mavs and Kyrie.
In a June 2024 press conference before the NBA Finals, Kyrie expressed his feelings about being in Dallas.
“I feel like it’s a great chapter being written right now, I’m enjoying every step of the way,” Kyrie said. “I’m enjoying the hot weather right now. I’m enjoying the Dallas community and the fans here. I’ve talked about how I felt embraced, but I think it goes a little deeper than that. “It’s really helped me grow as a human being and find my peace out here.”
To be adopted is to find a home. To belong is to thrive. In professional sports, fandom can provide a false sense of reality about the athletes who play for the home team. Fans get attached, emotions run high, and the invisible line where respect begins gets blurred. To be an NBA player also means they are adoptive sons to the cities they rep on a nightly basis, and if the player is a star, the empirical grip gets tighter. Only 49 NBA players have spent their entire career with the franchise that first signed them.* Dallas adopted a 7’0 tall German by the name of Dirk Nowitzki, holding on to him for his entire NBA career. He finished his career playing 21 seasons for the Mavericks, holding the record for most seasons played with one franchise. If there was a franchise that knew how to hold on to an adopted son, Dallas seemed like the best fit.
Forgive and forget. A lesson that Jesus Shuttlesworth needed to learn to move on with his relationship with his father. We can also learn to forgive ourselves and forget the past mistakes that prohibit us from moving forward. Jesus of Nazareth said to forgive the same number of times that appear on a Luka Dončić Dallas jersey.
“I’m extremely proud of him the way the year has evolved in respect to his play on the court and just how the organization, the Dallas organization, how they embraced him with fair value,” Drederick said. “There were no preconceived notions. It was with open arms and it just happened organically. And now we are where we are. I’m just like, beyond words, proud of him. Because he was able to persevere despite what he’s been subjected to past years, and that’s a true testament to who he is as a person.”
My dad would sometimes say, that’s my seed when referring to me in a proud moment. Metaphorically, it holds a weight that can’t be shed. I am my father’s son. Yet, I wouldn’t be where I am now without the other father figures who made me love myself to a greater degree. Those fathers were once sons. Many sons want to follow in their father’s footsteps, a journey that wouldn’t be possible without the many sons they meet on their journey.
I want to make my parents proud. I want to make my parental figures proud. It’s the ultimate currency, a priceless feeling that etches itself in the short time we have with our loved ones. Pride cometh before the fall, but the pride I’m referring to is rooted in a love that allows those involved to fall further into relationship with each other.
Kyrie did just that. Before his appearance in the 2024 NBA Finals, in a tribute to his father, Kyrie became the first athlete to sign his father to a shoe deal with the shoe brand ANTA.
“For him, to sign me as his first signature athlete is like overwhelmingly impressive. I’m just gratified at the gesture,” Drederick said. “Who gets to sign their father? And there’s a story behind so it means everything to me as a father.”
The Dallas Mavericks lost the 2024 NBA Finals in Game 5 of the series. Kyrie didn’t have the same on-court Finals performance he did back in 2015, but he did have a greater performance off the court. During each post-game press conference, Kyrie proved that he was a different person, composed of a different spirit. My friend, Alex, even agreed, saying, “He seems more grounded.” I knew I wasn’t crazy in my observations. He was rewriting his legacy in front of our eyes.
There was a moment during the Game 2 press conference where Kyrie was able to offer a young NBA player a piece of veteran advice. As a guest member of the media, Detroit Pistons rookie, Ausar Thompson was able to ask Kyrie a question about mindset in preparing during the off-season.
“I would start off with this, Ausar: try not to get FOMO as best as you can,” Irving told the guard. “Just because you’re so used to playing every day, working out every single day towards a goal. Now that the goal isn’t necessarily there to win a championship, you have to set other goals. That comes from a personal standpoint. What do you want to accomplish bringing into next season? It starts now while no one is watching. It’s just you by yourself, with your brother, or you’re playing five-on-five. Just working on the things everyone said you’re not great at. Or that you could not do, or you see within yourself that you need to improve because you’re seeing how hard it is to get here and how long you have to stay locked in.”
Ausar sat beside his twin brother, Amen, soaking up the knowledge passed down. It was a moment a young Kyrie would’ve wanted to relish in. When he spoke to Ausar, I imagine he told him what he would have wanted to say to his younger self.
Sons, you will go through your missteps along your spiritual journey. During your quest through sonhood, remember the hard pushes, forget the shame, and embrace the natural maturation process a young man goes through. Write your own legacy, not only for yourself but for the future sons who will see it too.
After the loss in Game 5, he addressed reporters about the team’s future, sporting a brown Enlighten Warrior cap.
“You know, I think from a spiritual standpoint, I think I enjoyed this journey more than any other season, just because of the redemption arc and being able to learn as much as I did about myself and my teammates and the organization and the people that I'm around,” Irving said. “It's a lot of good people here so it makes coming to work a lot of fun.”
“When you have that type of environment, I think it's easy to achieve goals that are bigger than yourself because everyone's really dialed in and having a good sense of joy about them.”
* Number of players reflects players who have played a minimum of 10 seasons
©Cole Henderson. All Rights Reserved.
This just became one of my favorite essays of yours
Great piece - my dad never let me win a one on one basketball game against him in my life. I was 17 when I finally beat him fair and square. One of the best days of my life 😂