With a newly minted gold medal draped across his neck, Kyrie Irving entered territory uncharted for most basketball players.
At 24, Irving is now the proud owner of one of the most decorated trophy cases in the sport. From the time he shook commissioner David Stern’s hand at the 2011 NBA Draft as the number one overall selection, Irving has consistently displayed a penchant for remaining cool under the searing heat of the game’s brightest lights.
In just five years as a professional, Uncle Drew has complied an eclectic list accomplishments that range from the exhibition, to the NBA, to the international stage:
• NBA Rookie of the Year
• All-Rookie Team Selection (First Team)
• NBA Rising Stars Challenge MVP
• Three-Point Shootout Champion
• NBA All-Star (3X)
• All-Star Game MVP
• FIBA World Cup Gold Medal
• FIBA World Cup MVP
• All-NBA Selection (Third Team)
• NBA Championship
• Olympic Gold Medal
That list would be impressive for a fifteen-year veteran ready to hang up his sneakers, let alone someone who won’t reach his 25th birthday for another seven months. For perspective, Bernard King was a four-time All-Star, made an All-NBA team four times and was on the All-Rookie team— that résumé alone was good enough to land King a spot in Springfield, MA. That’s right, Irving’s career accolades already suprass those of players currently enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame (and King isn’t the only one either).
Sidebar: Of course, King was a tremendous player whose career was cut short by injury. Still, the comparison is pretty staggering.
If you wish to nitpick Kyrie’s exploits at All-Star Weekend, understand that while those are exhibitions, they are an opportunity for the league’s best to showcase their abilities during one of the NBA’s premiere events. Even in this environment, Irving outshines the competition. Who can forget the crime he committed against Brandon Knight? It shows Kyrie’s willingness and ability to perform; even if the games don’t “count”, they count to him. It’s the same moxie that had him believe he could beat Kobe Bryant in 1-on-1 as a 20-year-old (back when Kobe wasn’t completely washed).
Some pundits were leery of Irving’s true impact on winning during the first three seasons of his career as the Cavs struggled to win more than 30 games. Those concerns and jokes were put to bed after Kyrie’s transcendent MVP performance at the 2014 FIBA World Cup. This, at a time when Kevin Durant had used the World Championships to ascend to superstardom in 2010 and the entire basketball world was ready to hand “the future of the NBA” over to Anthony Davis (Stephen Curry was on this team too). It was Irving who stole the show, and perhaps, officially let a certain South Florida small forward know that his 2014 All-Star Game MVP wasn’t a fluke.
It is Irving — not Damian Lillard, John Wall or other contemporaries he’s compared to — that is the most clutch performer in the game. He’s been that way since he first set foot in an NBA game, never once shying away from the moment.
Sidebar: You should know this isn’t a handful of made shots amongst a zillion crunch time bricks (cough, Kobe, cough). He really is money with the game on the line.
Now after a summer for the ages — which included netting a 27 ppg average and thoroughly outplaying the reigning back-to-back MVP in an NBA Finals that saw him hit the game winning three-pointer in Game 7 on the road against the greatest regular season team in league history (inhale…) — Irving has added yet another gold medal from international competition to his mantle. He also joined Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and LeBron James as the only players to win an NBA title and Olympic gold for Team USA in the same year. With the expanding laundry list of Wiki-worthy awards (individual and team), and all the clutch shots, the death-defying layups, the highlights via handles, the over growth of his game and his potential to get even better, the following question is begging to be asked: How can Kyrie Irving not be considered a top 10 player in the NBA?
The title for best point guard in the NBA has been hot potatoed back and forth between Curry, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook over the last several years— Irving has absolutely joined this cohort (and that’s it, sorry). Aside from these four, how many other people not named LeBron and Durant are slam dunk members of the NBA’s top 10? Kawhi, Klay, Aldridge, AD, Melo, Cousins, Blake, Harden, Wade, George— some of their game’s have serious deficiencies; most of them don’t have the basketball CV Kyrie possesses. Defense has been the knock on Irving for years, but it’s hard to question the improvement he’s made on that end. He played 39 minutes per game against the best shooting backcourt ever— he has to get some credit for Curry’s (.403) and Klay Thompson’s (.427) abysmal shooting in the Finals.
Yes, it’s advantageous to have LeBron James on your team. But the majority of Irving’s career accomplishments, including today’s Olympic gold medal, didn’t involve #23. Kyrie Irving has spent the last five years carving his own lane in the basketball universe. That same lane should have led him into everyone’s top 10 list.