The knock on Kyrie Irving has always been that he’s a point guard who doesn’t make his teammates better. In a vacuum, that’s understandable.
We want our point guards to be unselfish, to be made in the mould of Steve Nash, Jason Kidd and John Stockton – floor leaders who would rather see their teammates score than score themselves.
Some myopia colours this desire though. Because ultimately, unselfishness isn’t the ‘goal’ of basketball – the goal is to win. While a little point guard altruism often goes a long way towards achieving that, you know what also helps your team win? Scoring 57 points against the defending champs and hitting buzzer beaters for fun.
Before this year, I never really ‘got’ Kyrie Irving. He was an elite offensive talent who put up stats but his stats had no nutritional value. 22 and 6 are empty calories when your team is going 24-58. To me, he was this generation’s answer to Stephon Marbury or Steve Francis – a highlight reel scoring point guard who was more at home on Sportscenter’s Top 10 than the Conference Finals.
He was destined to be a more talented, less endearing Jamal Crawford – a guy who could get his shot whenever he wanted, but whose skill-set wasn’t necessarily conducive to winning basketball games. Then I saw Irving in person last December in Madison Square Garden. And then it all made sense.
In a game featuring LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Love and Quincy Acy, Irving was the best player on the court and it wasn’t even close. He annihilated the Knicks by himself.
With his teammates combining for just 53 points on 38 per cent shooting, Kyrie took over, dropping 37 points on just 18 shots, which seems impossible. His full arsenal was on display in the Garden.
The brutal crossovers, the hesitation drives and startling changes of speed, the reverse layups and delicate, unlikely high off glass finishes around the rim, the silky step-backs and picture perfect jumpshots, and of course that extra-terrestrial handle.
Sitting in the Garden with the best seats $175 could buy to watch my 4-16 team, the experience of watching Kyrie destroy my Knicks seemingly just because he felt like it, went something like this:
“Good. I hope Kyrie gets going, less shots for LeBron”
“Wow, that was a great move”
“Christ, no-one can stay in front of him”
“Wow, really, again?”
“Can someone please take Jose Calderon’s body to the morgue and get us a real defender for Kyrie?”
“Are you serious?”
“Are you serious?”
“Someone turn off the damn Playstation”
Kyrie was insane that night. He got to wherever he wanted on the floor and did whatever he liked when he got there. He put all of us Knicks fans in his personal hurt locker for the night.
The hardwood wasn’t as much a court as it was his stage to perform, and we were his amazed, incredulous, devastated audience. After doing something I didn’t know was possible in the third quarter, where he drove at Amar’e Stoudemire, elevated, faked with his right hand and then switched to his left in mid-air and finished high off glass, Kyrie dropped the mic and walked away with another feathery lefty layup off glass, this time with ten seconds left to win the game.
The list of players who can consistently have such efficient, diverse, destructive scoring nights is short. This wasn’t a one-off for Kyrie. He’s had 15 games this year where he’s scored 25 or more points on 50 per cent or better shooting, and that’s not including the 55 he dropped on Portland on 47 per cent shooting.
James, Durant, Curry, Harden, Davis, Westbrook, Irving and Lillard. Carmelo if he’s healthy, Paul if he wants it, and Dirk if he’s not feeling too old. That’s it for me.
Irving isn’t as good of an all-round player as most of these guys, but he might be the best pure scorer in the NBA. No-one else can score as efficiently in as many ways as Irving.
He’s also joined Curry as the pre-eminent heat-check guy in the league. When Kyrie goes Zero Dark Thirty, it’s all over. Everyone dies.
For the most part, basketball tends to make sense. You move the ball on offence, you take efficient, high-percentage shots at the rim or from the arc, you stick to your assignments on defence and you try to make your opponents take low-percentage shots. Adhering to these principles has made the Spurs consistently elite and it’s what has made the Hawks the best team in the East this year. Both those teams make sense. Often though, you need something that doesn’t make sense to win.
On Friday the Spurs were up 108-101 on the Cavs with 68 seconds to go. Tim Duncan had just rebounded a missed free throw and San Antonio had the ball. In a world that makes sense, the game was over.
I thought so anyway. I turned it off. Later that day I checked ESPN to see the final scores: 128-125, Cavs win in OT. I re-watched the final stanza to see what the hell happened. Kyrie Irving the hell happened.
Bucket and the foul. Outrageous corner three over Danny Green. More outrageous three over the entire state of Texas at the buzzer. Overtime. 11 more points in OT, 57 for the game.
7-7 from three, 10-10 from the line, 20-32 from the field. None of this makes sense. Nothing made sense that night in the Garden either, but nonsensical is something that guys like LeBron James and Kyrie Irving have made an art out of.
It’s for that reason that as logical and rational as it might be to pick the Hawks to make the Finals, at the end of the day, there’s a high percentage chance that logic and rationality will take a backseat to LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in May and June. Just ask San Antonio.
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