Kyrie Irving was not in a Nets uniform Monday night or in the Nets’ arena or in their pregame hype video. He was not injured or suspended or banned or ineligible. He was not protesting or boycotting or defying team rules or government mandates. He was not skipping the game to ponder our political divisions.
Kyrie Irving was not in a Nets uniform Monday because Kyrie Irving, the NBA’s preeminent agent of chaos, is no longer a Net. Which means the Nets no longer have to concern themselves with all the things listed in that first paragraph, all of which happened over the course of Irving’s dizzying three-and-a-half-year reign of terror in Brooklyn.
For the first time since July 2019—when the team handed Irving a No. 11 jersey, as the price of acquiring Kevin Durant—Kyrie Irving is not the Nets’ problem. He’s headed to Dallas, to join MVP candidate Luka Dončić, to make another round of promises (loyalty, commitment, reliability) that he almost certainly cannot keep, if his past is any indication.
