Nets: Jay Williams gives Kyrie respect for pre-Bubble take on social justice issues
By Adam Weinrib
Jay Williams finally acknowledged that Nets star Kyrie Irving was right on the money with his pre-Bubble concerns.
Nets star Kyrie Irving never wavered on his worry that sending the entire league into a literal bubble at the very time when racial tensions were bubbling over in America could backfire, from an image perspective and a personnel standpoint.
Most of the NBA’s stars, sixth men and chemists are very vocal leaders on the social justice front, and surely wouldn’t want their calls for equality to be snuffed out when they couldn’t be in the streets themselves.
Even Irving likely couldn’t have foreseen this exact scenario, though, with a boycott made temporary following some heated conversations and a lifeline to former President Obama.
Needless to say, though he didn’t nail the extremity of the situation and its particulars, Irving deserves far more kudos for raising the issue prior to the league’s resumption, and former point guard and current analyst Jay Williams gave him the credit he deserved this week … finally.
https://twitter.com/ScoopB/status/1299808309265010689?s=20
As Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson pulled from Williams on his appearance on the Heavy With Scoop B show:
"“I don’t think the message always translates from here (Williams points to his head) to here (Williams points to his mouth) the right way sometimes. I think, sometimes, that gets lost. I think one of the things that makes it difficult for Ky is we have a hard time of letting go of your past history. We take, ‘Well, he wasn’t a leader in Boston and looks what happened in Boston, or look what happened in Cleveland and LeBron [James],’ and all these different things. One of the things I get frustrated about [with] the way the public perceives Kyrie is we don’t allow him the opportunity to grow. I think Kyrie Irving has grown tremendously over the last couple of years of his life, and it’s not easy.”"
The media loves to write about the drama Kyrie Irving stirs up. When he gets a Nets group chat together to talk sitting out the NBA restart? That’s just Kyrie torpedoing things again, per the wanton press.
“Kyrie irving, the disruption.” Apology needed to be loud. https://t.co/Hp8OTBUkaP
— Slaydro (@TheTrackMamba) August 26, 2020
But there’s a difference between Irving failing to mesh with his Celtics teammates on the court, and calling out the NBA for failing its players with platitudes during a time of great upheaval.
The Bubble may be continuing without Irving, but he foresaw everything that ultimately led to its reckoning. It’s about time the mainstream media gave him a hat tip.
