A Frank Discussion About Kyrie Irving

[Kidbasketball20]

Kyrie is a STUD PG. One of the top tier PGs in the league, esp. against Eastern opponents.


LeBron has NEVER had a better PG to play with. EVER.

[dubeta]

Kyrie is a STUD PG. One of the top tier PGs in the league, esp. against Eastern opponents.


LeBron has NEVER had a better PG to play with. EVER.

Not really saying much

[Kidbasketball20]

[/B]


Not really saying much

Chalmers is a SCRUB


Irving is 10x better of a player

[JtotheIzzo]

Not sure if serious. This has no bearing on reality. I can name 20 alpha players that never won this award off the top of my head.

Name me 20 Alphas from 1981 till now who never won ASG MVP (and they need to be at the level of multiple all star alpha, not someone like Charles Oakley because he is hard or Horry because he is clutch, gotta be Alphas who were in postion to win this award). No, make it 15, you cannot and you will be wrong...tick tock...tick tock...

[pegasus]

His hands have been very active in the tournament, stealing a lot of balls, causing many turnovers, but he's not a defensive stopper. He's showing improvement, but I'm not sure if he can play like that 35-38 minutes a game, and about 100 games next year if they make it to the finals. Plus he's taking risks to go for those steals, and the NBA guards will punish him harder than the internationals guards.

Thus far in his career he's gotten pretty close to getting the "injury prone" label, so playing a lot more basketball (this tournament plus a deep playoff run) in one year may break him.

As far as skills go, he is one of the most offensively skilled in the league. Great handles, great shooting/slashing. He was also clutch as hell two years ago, so it'll be very interesting to see who tries to take over late in close games. Lebron would be expected to, but we all know that's not his strength. Will he get out of the way and let Kyrie do his thing?

[kurple]

i dont get the Kyrie hype

let me put it this way. currently (the last two season) ty lawson has had a much bigger impact on each game than Irving.

Ty lawson would have led last years Cleveland team to more wins. And he's also a proven playoff preformer (the only one of the current nuggets that actually steps up in the playoffs)

what exactly makes Irving better than Lawson? Is it the Uncle Drew commercial? Is it the sick handles that looks great on sportcentre? Is it the fact that he was a 1st overall pick?

Irving har A LOT more potential than Lawson. But at the moment, Lawson has a bigger impact on a basketball game.

[andremiller07]

i dont get the Kyrie hype

let me put it this way. currently (the last two season) ty lawson has had a much bigger impact on each game than Irving.

Ty lawson would have led last years Cleveland team to more wins. And he's also a proven playoff preformer (the only one of the current nuggets that actually steps up in the playoffs)

what exactly makes Irving better than Lawson? Is it the Uncle Drew commercial? Is it the sick handles that looks great on sportcentre? Is it the fact that he was a 1st overall pick?

Irving har A LOT more potential than Lawson. But at the moment, Lawson has a bigger impact on a basketball game.

100% agree, Lawson is crazy underrated on here, I thought Teague had a bigger impact to Kyrie as well but that's just me

[kshutts1]

Lebron, Durant, Westbrook, Paul, Howard, Dirk, Melo, Aldridge, Davis, Love are all definitely better than Irving.

After those players, we have injured better-when-healthy players in George, Rose, Horford, Kobe.

Then the similar tier (question mark tier, if you will) to Irving... Lillard, Harden, Ibaka, Curry, Iggy, Lawson, Noah, M Gasol, Wade, Parker, Dragic, Conley...

I'm not sure how there is any argument for Irving in the first group of players. I don't see him being better than the injured group. And in the question-mark-tier, hence the name, I can see arguments for and against any comparison. I'd rank at least half of them higher than Irving, though.

As for your "arguments"....
1)ESPN is straight garbage.
2)....Rose shouldn't be on the team, and starting is about fit, not about talent or ability.
3)Nearly everyone in an ASG is "alpha" (and boy, do I hate that term)
4)So?

ESPN, and casuals, are on Irving's nuts because of his late game "heroics" his rookie year and his flashy game. We all know this. We all deal with it.
Cleveland fans like him because he made their team bearable again, and they needed someone to look towards with Lebron gone.

In no way is Irving a bad player; he is quite good. Perhaps great, even. But top 8 PG is a proper ranking, as is top 20-25 player.

[DukeDelonte13]

He doesn't play with passion or zeal for the game, at least not consistently. There are guys that really play with their hearts on their sleeve, Kyrie is not one of them.

That's his big knock. He can be lackadaisical. He doesn't have the right intangibles to be a team leader, but playing alongside Lebron and Love is going to by default take that role away from him.

He's only 22 years old though, he still has a lot of growing up to do.

A lot of people like to say Kyrie regressed last year and I think that that's bullsh*t. I've watched every single game Kyrie has played. He didn't regress, he had some of the best games of his career last season. He played at a slower pace in an unimaginative offense, and for the first time in his career was held accountable defensively. It was a big adjustment for him, learning how to exert energy in a complex defensive scheme while still controlling the offense.

Byron Scott literally had no defensive system in place, and let the young guys essentially do whatever the f*ck they wanted. Mike Brown was way stricter, much less fun to play for, (and Kyrie and his Dad made that known) and he continually just went over defensive stuff in practices.

MB also played Kyrie at the 2 frequently.

[Jlamb47]

Chalmers is a SCRUB


Irving is 10x better of a player

M Williams wasnt a scrub, he mad ethe all star team, but irving better

[HurricaneKid]

I often go to the NBA Forum for consensus on certain things basketball, because once you swim through the trolling you actually do find answers, and good answers, answers so accurate that it is hard to discuss basketball with people outside this forum because they don't have the reps we do when it comes to player comparisons, GOAT etc.

We are well tooled and have plodded through a lot of the research.

My thinking now though is that we have totally missed the mark with Kyrie Irving. Board consensus has him ranked as the 7th or 8th PG in the NBA, behind Paul, Westbrook, Rose, Curry, Parker,Lillard, Dragic and the likes, but I am gonna say right here, right now that he is higher than that.

Why?

1-ESPN has him as the 8th best player in the league, and we have him as the 8th best PG? I know ESPN is what it is, but how can we be so adrift rankings wise?

2-He has started over Derrick Rose this entire World Cup. Yes Rose is battling back from injury, but remember two weeks before the tourney the leaked video of Rose being 'better than ever', 'in the best shape of his life."

3-Irving was ASG MVP. I take a lot of heat for trumping this, but when you look at who has won this award it is a clear alpha move. All the best players are there, they care, and it takes a special kind of skill/swag to take this game over.

4-He is about to embark on a long playoff run that will put him in the spotlight. He is now a member of a special team that will be in big moments.

I think we need to re-evaluate how we look at Irving.

1) ESPN's rankings are AWFUL. They are agenda driven and often entirely without merit. A random 8 year old often has as much sense as the company that employs Skip Bayless.

2) Derrick Rose has been a nightmare. Coming into the Slovenia game he was playing in a tourney against backups to non-nba players and was shooting 21% or something. And with a negative Asst:TO ratio. Using him as the benchmark is laughable.

3) This used to mean more. Elite players would freeze out young players and people they didn't deem worthy. Now its just a fun weekend and the elite players don't put nearly the effort into the game that they would for a regular season Tuesday night game. The fact that Kyrie's two brightest career moments are in exhibition games is NOT A GOOD THING.

4) I don't understand this. Because he has coattails to ride he is a great player?? Seriously???


I have been pleased with his dedication to defense for Team USA and he clearly has an enormous skill set. But he has NOT utilized those skills to this point. Last year was an abject nightmare. The only G in the NBA that played significant minutes and had a worse RAPM than him was Brandon Jennings. His team was 9 points better defensively with him on the pine. And they were actually 5 points better overall with him out of the game. His biggest assets are his ball handling and his ability to drive, which appear likely to be massively diminished with LeBron set to come in and dominate the ball. He is a young player with significant upside but his pairing with LeBron is questionable at best and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about how they are going to play together.

[Hoopz2332]

i dont get the Kyrie hype

let me put it this way. currently (the last two season) ty lawson has had a much bigger impact on each game than Irving.

Ty lawson would have led last years Cleveland team to more wins. And he's also a proven playoff preformer (the only one of the current nuggets that actually steps up in the playoffs)

what exactly makes Irving better than Lawson? Is it the Uncle Drew commercial? Is it the sick handles that looks great on sportcentre? Is it the fact that he was a 1st overall pick?

Irving har A LOT more potential than Lawson. But at the moment, Lawson has a bigger impact on a basketball game.