Colin Sheridan: Kyrie Irving, Callum Robinson, and the vague sense of a stance

Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

Kyrie Irving is an alchemist. His hands are a pair of magic wands that can do things to a basketball few others who played ever could.

He has the feet of a ballerina, and the on-court acumen of a supercomputer. His comparative lack of size means he’ll never be as dominant as LeBron James or Kevin Durant. He’s prone to injury — and to not sticking around — which means he’ll never have the legacy of Steph Curry or even Giannis. But, make no mistake, Irving has magic in his hands and feet. To watch him practise it is to witness greatness manifest. His gift is otherworldly. Which makes the fact we won’t be seeing him do it for a while all the harder to stomach.

Why? Well, as with everything else with Irving, it’s complicated. We spent a lot of last week picking apart the comments of Irish footballer Callum Robinson, who outlined his “vaccine uncertain” stance, one which had led him to remain unvaccinated to the point of showing up for international duty.

He was not against the vaccine, he told us, he just wasn’t sure about it either. Any anxiety manager Stephen Kenny may have felt as to whether to select Robinson against Azerbaijan and Qatar was likely assuaged by the fact the West Brom striker numbered only one in about eight of his squad that had yet to be jabbed, meaning his was less of an actual stance, more a shrug of the shoulders. Either way, there was no obligation for any player to be vaccinated, so all the conjecture around the topic was merely that, and evaporated as soon as Robinson scored a screamer against the Azeri.

Irving will likely be unaware of Robinson’s story, but there are parallels; the Brooklyn Nets guard last week was benched by his team because of his refusal to get the Covid-19 vaccine, which is much more problematic for Nets coach Steve Nash than Robinson’s indecision was for Kenny. New York City’s vaccine mandate does not allow Irving to participate in either home games or team practice given his current status, so the Nets chose to make him unavailable “until he is eligible to be a full participant”.

The implications of this are many, not least to Irving’s wallet (he stands to lose out on $17m in salary), as well as the Nets’ championship prospects, as the season starts tomorrow night.

With respect, Robinson — for all his increasingly obvious qualities — is not Irving. Irving — on his day — is Mo Salah, but with an asterisk (which we will get to later).

Where their stories collide is the vagueness of their reasoning. Robinson didn’t rule out getting vaccinated in the future, but did put forward his right to choose. If we can thank him for anything, it should be the brevity he observed in getting his muddled point across over the course of a few minutes in a press conference. Irving used a 28-minute, self-indulgent, rambling Instagram Live post to argue pretty much the same thing, citing his unwillingness to surrender his voice, and do what’s right for his body. That was it, really; that and he told us it wasn’t about the money, and, did we really think he wants to lose out on all that goddam money? I told you it was complicated.

Maybe it’s easier to surrender $17m in annual salary when it’s guaranteed you’ll be paid another $18m of it anyway, even if you don’t shoot as much as one free throw. Most of us will never know that conflict.

Before Irving took to Instagram to dis-explain himself, an anonymous confidante was quoted by The Athletic as saying Kyrie wanted to be “a voice to the voiceless”, the voiceless in this case being the people who lost their jobs as a result of choosing not to be vaccinated. Sure, losing your job for whatever reason is never fun, but I’m not sure that cohort needs an altruistically confused genius basketball player to be its champion.

There’s enough cuckoo radio hosts in middle America to do that.

Back to the asterisk. The greatest shame in all of this is not the incoherence of Irving’s Covid stance, but the fact he seems intent on fulfilling a tortured prophecy that he is to be this generation’s lost superstar. A curtailed college career at Duke. One championship ring at Cleveland. A brutal break-up with Boston. Now, he sits socially distanced from the team he helped build in Brooklyn. Given his talent and intelligence, it is a criminal underachievement. He will correctly argue it is his right, but in exercising it, he is depriving us all the fruits of his undoubted alchemy.

Sure, it’s complicated, but sometimes Kyrie, it doesn’t have to be.