DALLAS — Thirty-one days after Kyrie Irving’s trade from Brooklyn to Dallas, Mavericks and Irving fans on Wednesday awoke to the first instance of free-speech Kai, unfettered of reporters’ questions and unrestrained of clipped sound bites.
Irving spoke for 67 minutes on his Twitch livestream channel. Anyone who watched and assumed — hoped? — that he would say something controversial or damning probably is disappointed.
Speaking to his “tribe,” Irving said he had returned to Dallas roughly 20 to 30 minutes earlier, the team plane landing around midnight following Wednesday’s loss in New Orleans.
He mentioned the Mavericks franchise only twice, briefly, and spoke of basketball only in general terms during his stream of consciousness that delved into topics ranging from sports gambling to media biases to racism to cancel culture.
Saying at the outset that he would speak for only 11 minutes, Irving apologized for not having conducted a Twitch livestream since last summer — before he became embroiled in controversy for posting a link to antisemitic work, being suspended by the Nets for initially failing to unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs and ultimately asking to be traded.
“I want to apologize to all those that have been supporting me unconditionally,” he said. “You know, I never wanted to be away from the stream for this long.”
He said the reason he is able to Twitch stream now is that he has taken steps to find his elusive inner peace.
“Things happen. A lot has happened in the world. A lot has happened to me. Specifically, I’ve had to, shoot, grow. I’ve had to grow. It hasn’t been perfect. It hasn’t been easy, but preserving through it all.”
Wearing a fluffy brown UGG robe, Irving lit a smudge log — ‘’making sure y’all know, it’s sage” — and added: “I feel like I was low-key held captive at times because I couldn’t get on my social platforms to really talk to you about the truth.”
Here are a few of the many topics that Irving addressed, in his words, lightly edited for clarity:
Sports gambling
“There’s a difference between being a diehard fan and supporting your team and loving your team versus somebody that’s betting on a parlay. ... Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want anybody wasting their money on me. But goddang this whole community of gamblers has come into the game of basketball?
“I’m just gonna call it out. Everybody be talking about their f---ing ticket. I’m not gonna say I don’t care about your ticket, but if you want to gamble, why don’t you gamble on something that makes sense, to you? And if you gamble on me, I’m not going to tell you whether it’s a good gamble or bagging, I’m just saying you’re gambling. You’re gonna win or lose.
“But that doesn’t mean sliding into people’s DMs or wishing bad on them or doing the extra s--- that goes on. It blows my mind sometimes. ... Because me as a hooper, I’m just trying to get a bucket. I’m trying to win ballgames most importantly, and I’m gonna be successful some nights and I’m gonna fail but overall the reason why I said peace of mind is everything. Just look at these distractions that ultimately take away from the game.
“I’m just saying it’s tainting the game.”
Public and media perception
“If you go based off of what other people say, you would think that I’m this or I’m that. ... Because guess who gets to tell my narrative before I even get to say anything? The very people that we depend on for the news.
“The very people who have bitter, older individuals, reporting on people they barely know. Saying things to the public to make you think that I’m a certain type of way.
“Why is that? Why do they want to make me seem like I’m a certain type of way, when I’m just explaining to people that I have a devotion to my family? I have a devotion to the creator, I have a devotion to ancestors. And I have a devotion to the revolution that my people have put forth before me. I’m a tribal man. I’m a chief. My name is Hélà. I’m a native indigenous African man, striving to do better for my people. Why am I a target?”
About his departures from Cleveland, Boston and Brooklyn
“You see me on the court for three hours. What do you think I’m doing in those 21 other than sleeping? You see me for three hours. You see my social presence on my platforms. You see me for three hours and you think you know who I am ... ‘Oh, Kai is woke ... Kai is, oh my goodness, he just doesn’t fit into the mold of people. He’s different. He’s crazy. He’s arrogant.’
“All from seeing me for three hours. You get all that? ‘What is Kai going to do this summer? Does Kai like Dallas? What happened in Brooklyn? What happened in Boston? What happened in Cleveland? Why did you leave LeBron? Why did you leave Jayson? Why did you leave KD? Why did you leave all these people?’
“For three hours. You get to ask all these legitimate questions, as if 21 hours every day wasn’t happening after that. As if life still wasn’t taking place.”
Racism
“I’ve been called anything and everything under the sun because I’ve made decisions with my life and I’ve tried to assist my community to awaken to the truth of the way that we’ve been treated. For not one year. Not five years. Not 10 years. Not 30 years. Not 50 years. Not 80 years. Not 150 years. Not 250 years. Not 350 years. Not 400 years. But we’re going on about 500 years of a war against nonwhite people.
“I’m not being a racist. I’m not being a bigot. I’m just saying I am in alignment with my ancestors. And I’m aware of the struggle that they went through. That’s all, for the last 500 years. ... And the people that are bitter want me to be content with where we are now, as a ‘progressive society that cares about every human being.’
“I’m just becoming more self-aware. ... I’m not going to talk about the racial issues. All I’m saying is my ancestors and my family have been in war for the last 500 years.”
