Intrigue, fascination and surprise: Kyrie Irving

Don’t expect me to talk statistics this time. Lovers of cold numbers do not come to me, mathematics scholars do not stop at this text. Enjoy the lovers of poetry, of infinite works, of those who smile at impossible movements.

Here is the return of literature to the sports field. The fine line of paint on the canvas. The alchemist with the right balance in the laboratory, the magic that is born from the hand of Kyrie Irving. Not from the right, but from the left. Not with a tray, but with a hook. Or a semi-hook to be more precise. Or whatever you want. Because it could be multiple things, but what it cannot be is indifference to something like that. What we can’t do is avoid jumping out of our seats, shouting, shaking our heads. Because once upon a time we already lived it. There’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar again with his uppercut toward the sky. Magic Johnson defeated the Boston Celtics with his perfect copycat move to win glory.

As Marshall McLuhan once wrote, the medium is the message. Irving, then, is himself that cryptic message for those who look closely. There is a maxim that surrounds him: he can do things that others cannot. He can change hands with the speed of a card counter, he can move his body with the plasticity of a professional tightrope walker, he can make us feel again, for one night, that the world belongs to us.

What is basketball if it’s not what we saw? What is sport if it does not focus on an emotional game that extends over time? Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray, a brilliant clutch player, scores a three-pointer. On the other side, the Balkan magician Luka Doncic retreated and tripled to tie. Murray misses his shot, Jason Kidd calls time with 2.8 seconds left, and in that Formula One time, in that pause in the pits to measure hearts, Irving gives away a fantasy action to satisfy the hunger of the hunters for lost emotions .

Welcome, once again, sentimentalists of the forums and networks. Basketball nostalgia in its purest form, a necessary spark to warm up the NBA for the playoffs. Ah, the competition. The one we missed in the All-Star and the one that serves to give meaning to this wonderful sport. They say it’s cinema, but much more than that it’s theater: the conflict is born from the duel between Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic, from that significant expectation, but it will end up being resolved with the sporting stab of a third party that revives as The Phoenix will recover its flagship brand. Intrigue, fascination and surprise: the perfect triad to feel that we are alive.

Irving knew how to be Harvey Two-Face in recent years: serial refuter of COVID-19, flat earth fanatic, eccentric and controversial tweeter, but also a phenomenal basketball player. Sunday afternoon’s play, in the Dallas Mavericks’ victory against the champion Nuggets, is a fundamental reminder of the latter: a beautiful and anthological way to quietly whisper a return. A line in an open script according to a talent-artist of this nature: “Don’t forget that I’m still here. The fight isn’t over until it’s over.”

Let us then travel together this path to happiness, even if it is ephemeral: Irving, the star of the Cleveland Cavaliers who won a title with LeBron James in 2016, the one who anticipated this movement with a buzzer-beater with the less skilled. In December 2022 with the Brooklyn Nets against the Toronto Raptors, he says that he still has important things to say: “The team is Luka Doncic’s, I know, but he is also mine. Starting tonight, he is also mine”.

Disruptive, skillful, creative and different – above all different -, Irving once again awakens astonishment with a work of a crack illusionist. With one hand or the other. Right or left. The Mavericks want, once and for all, to put mediocrity aside and live with the extraordinary.

They already have Doncic. And now, finally, and just in time, they have Irving.

Welcome, then, to the NBA that we are passionate about.

Welcome to the NBA, where great things are always about to happen.