The Brooklyn Nets’ season is already going off the rails during the short first month of the NBA season. Brooklyn fell to 1-5 on Saturday by losing at home to the Indiana Pacers, 125-116, in a game they entered as a heavy favorite. The franchise’s turbulent offseason has given way to a disappointing start that now has Brooklyn is tied for the worst record in the Eastern Conference.
Kyrie Irving is promoting antisemitism and he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care
Kyrie Irving complained that the media doesn’t understand why he posted an antisemitic documentary while refusing to answer questions about it.
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
There’s plenty to talk about when it comes to the on-court reasons for the Nets’ awful start, yet all the talk after the game was focused on something Kyrie Irving recently posted on social media. Irving posted an Amazon link to a film called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” on Twitter Thursday afternoon. The film (and the book of the same name) is filled with antisemitic rhetoric, as was detailed in Rolling Stone.
Following the loss to the Pacers, reporters in Brooklyn grilled Irving on what he tweeted. Find video of the combative back-and-forth here:
Nets Daily has a full transcription of Irving’s comments. Irving denied being antisemitic but failed to show an understanding for what exactly he was promoting by posting a link to the film. In addition to questioning Irving on his recent tweet, reporters also followed up on an old Alex Jones video Irving posted on Twitter over the summer. Jones was recently ordered to pay nearly $1 billion for lies told about the Sandy Hook tragedy. Irving said Jones’ comments about secret societies were “true,” which is not correct. Here’s a transcript, via Nets Daily:
Nick Friedell: Kyrie, while we’re on the topic of promotion, why did you decide to promote something that Alex Jones said?
Kyrie Irving: That was a few weeks ago, I do not stand with Alex Jones’s position, narrative, (the) court case that he had with Sandy Hook, or any of the kids that felt like they had to relive trauma or parents that had to relive trauma or to be dismissive to all the lives that were lost during that tragic event. My post was a post from Alex Jones that he did in the early nineties or late nineties about secret societies in America of a cult. And it’s true. So I wasn’t identifying with anything being a campaignist [sic] for Alex Jones or anything. I was just there to post. And it’s funny, and it’s actually hilarious because out of all the things I posted that day, that was the one post that everyone chose to see. It just goes back to the way our world is and works. I’m not here to complain about it, I just exist.
Irving’s beliefs are false and dangerous. He kept the conversation going on Twitter on Sunday.
Reaction to Irving’s comments continued Saturday night and Sunday morning on Twitter. Here are some of the best tweets on Irving over the last 24 hours:
Irving is having an incredible individual start to the season, averaging more than 30 points per game so far, but he keeps overshadowing his immense talent by spreading false and discriminatory anti-logic. Irving has a massive platform and a ton of devoted fans: what he says matters, and he has been spreading misinformation to a wide audience for years at this point.
Meanwhile, the Nets stink. This team was supposed to compete for a championship with Kevin Durant and Irving and Ben Simmons, but instead they’re one of the worst teams in the NBA so far. Brooklyn’s sinking ship and Irving’s troubling public behavior will be one of the season’s biggest stories all year.
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