Since joining the Brooklyn Nets, Kyrie Irving has created a distraction off the court every season. Irving has made headlines for reasons unrelated to basketball far too frequently, whether it was sudden absences, a refusal to get immunized, or this most recent incident of distributing antisemitic material.
Before Brooklyn’s Tuesday night loss to the Chicago Bulls, the NBA on TNT crew discussed this, with Shaquille O’Neal saying he doesn’t want to be held accountable for what Irving has done. O’Neal and Charles Barkley both referred to Irving as an “idiot” while discussing his actions throughout multiple seasons, not just this one.
The Brooklyn Nets are now a terrible basketball club, and when you add the off-court distractions they are dealing with—Kyrie Irving’s controversy and their search for a new head coach—you can see how bad things are for them. Although the company is under pressure, they’re trying to lessen some outside noise; they can now do so.
If Brooklyn cannot recover from this terrible season, there is a significant probability that this team will look drastically different next year. There was a feeling that things would only get better after getting swept in the previous season’s first round of the playoffs. Since then, Brooklyn has seen a significant worsening of conditions, with Kyrie Irving playing a prominent role in this.