Welcome back to this thing we do here called #BasketballandFeelings. The NBA world is of course ablaze with the chatter around Dame Lillard’s trade request to the Miami Heat. This would be my dream scenario for Dame, a player I have rooted for and loved for years upon years, for his game of course but even more so for his Character. What’s not to like about a dude who spent 11 YEARS committed to a franchise, never once “forcing” his way out to ring chase. Dame took the punches and tried to do everything in his power to give management and ownership at the Portland Trailblazers their space to create something special around him. Almost twelve years later, Portland has decided to start a youth movement, to “build for the future,” and classy-classy Dame politely asked to get the hell out of there. Which brings me straight to my main man, Kyrie Irving.
Have you ever wanted out of a work situation before? I have. Comment below and let me know what that was like!
Say what you want about Kyrie, I’m not going to spend this time on some of his, shall we say, debatable decisions around the tribe. ✡️ Only Kyrie can know in his heart if he’s like that. What I do want to talk about is the gigantic four year deal Kyrie just signed with the Mavericks, 4 years for one-hundred-and-twenty million dollars. Even writing that out kinda hurts my hand, because it takes a while.
First of all, congrats to Kyrie and his Auntie who somehow found the one team in the NBA willing to spend money on him. I would love to know if they strategically thought it through before being traded to the Mavericks, or if they just kinda ran into some good fortune by being traded to a desperate team that would do anything to keep its young Slovenian superstar happy. Now that I think about it I do think it’s possible they did this on purpose.
Isn’t it sort of right out of the Kyrie Irving playbook? He did the exact same thing in Brooklyn with Kevin Durant. Gloaming onto superstars that depend on him has already paid off mightily for Kryie, so why not do the same thing in Dallas with Luca freaking Doncic? Kyrie held the power and got the pay day. Classy. I’m not mad at it.
But what if he could’ve gotten more?
What if, and bare with me for a second, Kyrie actually cared about playing up to his potential. So here’s why I love the NBA so much. In Kyrie’s case it probably doesn’t matter that much. One-hundred-twenty-million dollars for half-assing it is a pretty decent deal. Financially speaking, I’m not sure Kyrie Irving himself needs to overthink this, so I’m going to overthink it for him.
Kyrie, if you actually cared about basketball the same way, say, Los Angeles Laker forward Austin Reaves does, you might be sitting on a contract twice the size right now. You might be getting Warren Buffet sized contracts if you gave yourself to the game with the level of passion and commitment of a backup Broadway dancer.
It matters. Again, not for you, but for most anyone of us. Because most of us can’t really half-ass it at work and expect to get paid handsomely, much less not get fired. We’re expected to at least pretend like we give a shit. But more than that, and I think this especially matters if you’re fortunate enough to be doing something cool with your life, we probably want to be trying really hard because, well, we’re excited about doing it, and maybe a tiny bit scared about losing it?
A little laissez faire or anti-work attitude is always healthy in my opinion, no matter what you do in life, but at the end of the day when you like what you do, you’re probably grateful, or at the very least trying not to fuck it up as badly as Kyrie seemingly does every time he laces his (not-Nike) sneakers.
Kyrie could care less about the soul of basketball, and well, basketball, or at least the business of basketball, is pretty much okay with that in 2023. Personally, I don’t care how much he says he loves to play, his actions say the all too cynical opposite. He might talk a big game about his love for hooping, but that’s all it is at the end of the day. Talk. Otherwise, he’d be raking in twice as much money as he is, and more importantly, contributing to a winning basketball ecosystem that little kids could be proud of. Sort of like, um, Dame Lillard.