Some musings for a Monday as we've now gone 97 days since a game was played in a North American pro sports league, with some Red Sox prospect talk, the real second-year Patriots player people should be talking about and the return of youth sports in Massachusetts ...
- It's great Kyrie Irving says he's concerned that when NBA players return to action next month, the focus being taken off the much more important protests against systemic racism in this country. He's certainly entitled to his opinion on that. That's a valid concern, even though I think it's misguided since the NBA's return could have the exact opposite effect: with the spotlight largely to themselves for a time, NBA players could keep the conversation going when otherwise it could fade from the public's consciousness.
Still, it's not wrong for Irving to have those concerns and to voice them.
It's just that nobody should take him seriously within NBA circles. Because the messenger matters when it comes to Irving. You can't have his history when it comes to things like this. It's like if Lance Armstrong became the face of anti-doping in cycling ... nobody should listen.
When it comes to Irving, there is one thing that is clear: as soon as he's sucked the usefulness out of something, he looks to blow up his situation and doesn't care who gets hurt by it. It's always about Kyrie.
Irving was so delusional about his own value that he didn't want LeBron James to return to Cleveland in 2014. So what did he do? He forced the Cavs to trade him in 2017. Cleveland has been a crater since first Kyrie and then LeBron left, with 38 wins total the past two seasons.
Of course, Kyrie wanted the trade to Boston because he knew he could carry a team on his own (and needed his own spotlight).
How'd everyone enjoy that here?
Thanks to Kyrie's knee issues, leadership problems, selfish decisions like getting a nosejob instead of sitting on the bench for GAME 7 OF THE EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS, saying he was going to re-sign with the Celtics before later slinking off to the Nets with Kevin Durant, the Celtics' championship aspirations for the next few years were damaged (though they aren't impossible).
Thanks for all that, Kyrie. (Oh, and it's also a shock that Irving sustained a "season-ending" injury in his first season with the Nets, just like he did with the Celtics.)
With all that as a backdrop (and there's so much more including the crackpot stuff he espouses in an attempt to show how he's so much smarter than anyone else), now, an injured Irving shoots his mouth off about how NBA players shouldn't want to return ... a week after he voiced no concerns about the plan ... while he doesn't even need to be there because of his injury ... after the players union leadership couldn't get him on the phone to talk about the issues ... is anyone shocked that Irving injected himself in all this, not to make it better, but to blow it up?
If Irving had real concerns and really wanted to change things for the better, he would have had the self-awareness — since he's so brilliant — to realize that because he's injured and doesn't have skin in the game, and given his own history, that maybe he wouldn't be the right messenger. He could have gone to any of the other NBPA vice presidents — including former teammates Andre Iguodala and Jaylen Brown — tried to recruit them to his point of view and had them make the case to the rest of the players.
Again, as if Irving's motivations were pure ... and they haven't always been in the past.
They weren't because this, again, had to be about Kyrie being the disruptor, the deep thinker and being the voice of change. He had to have the headlines, including this one, and the soundbites be all about him despite the fact that he really hasn't been relevant on the court in the postseason since ... when exactly ... 2017?
It's always about Kyrie, which makes the messenger irrelevant and one that should be ignored.
- For whatever reason, I've always thought players with cool names had a better shot at stardom, like it was destiny (yeah, I was out of luck...). It doesn't always hold true (I didn't think a guy a guy named Charl would don a green jacket ... but Schwartzel hasn't done anything since the 2011 Masters, so...), but it usually does.
So with that in mind, I got a little excited when the Red Sox drafted Blaze Jordan in the MLB Draft. I mean, how is a kid with a name like that not going to make the majors? Of course he's a power phenom.
- QB Jarrett Stidham. Duh.
- WR N'Keal Harry (and this is also a hope vote because the Patriots have to get a lot more out of him to be decent offensively);
- RB Damien Harris ... even when running backs are invisible to their own team they're overrated by fantasy players;
- And you might hear an outside vote for Chase Winovich because people like sacks and the Patriots are going to need them.