Kyrie Irving reportedly suggested players should form their own basketball league as he is very much against the NBA’s plan to restart the 2019/20 season in Orlando, Florida.
The Brooklyn Nets point guard has been in staunch opposition of the league’s proposal, despite being on board during the initial stages of discussions between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). Irving, who is the vice president of the union, got over 80 players on a call last Friday during which they laid their thoughts bare as it relates to the restart plans amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the current state affairs in the United States.
According to the New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy, the All-Star point guard has also proposed players could start their own league in a Nets group chat.
Some People Think Kyrie Irving Is Stirring Up Trouble Unnecessarily
This claim comes in the wake of ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Malika Andrews reporting Irving and Avery Bradley of the Los Angeles Lakers helped form a player coalition with the aim of providing players who are hesitant to speak out with a platform..
The likes of Stephen A. Smith, Matt Barnes, and Kendrick Perkins have all opposed Kyrie’s views, with Barnes claiming the guard only changed his stance because he wasn’t greenlit to travel to Orlando with the Nets.
“Kyrie needs to quit bulls—ing, because what I heard was Kyrie wanted to go to Orlando to support his team,” Barnes said this week. “They didn’t let him. So then he flipped the script talking about I’m gonna give up everything.
“You can give up everything and go do the Maya Moore s— if you really want to. At the same time, sitting out without a cause or a purpose defeats the purpose. And then it also divides us. … I respect people don’t want to play because if it’s COVID and you’re putting your family at risk, I get that. But if it’s for the movement of the country right now, we have to take charge of this.”
