If you're still trying to figure out what Kyrie Irving's thinking on a given day, you aren't alone. While we wait on his official free agent decision, and it seems like a formality that he will leave the Celtics for the Nets, more details are sure to emerge to try and explain his thought process.
One potential detail came from a story Doug Gottlieb told on The Best of the Herd Podcast, which included a strange interaction between him and Brad Stevens before a film session.
Kyrie came in one day to [a film session], he was the first one in film room. He walked up to Brad Stevens and said, ‘What does government mean to you?’
Stevens is one of the more prepared head coaches in the NBA, but he was probably taken a bit off guard from the question.
Though this isn't anything new for Irving. In a story by Bleacher Report's Howard Beck written before the start of the 2018-19 season, he wrote how Irving challenges his teammates' intellect on a daily basis. So maybe this was him picking Stevens' brain.
So Stevens went into some absolute soliloquy saying absolutely nothing because he didn’t know what kind of trap door any sort of word was. And then Stevens said, ‘What’s it mean to you, Kyrie?’ Kyrie said, ‘Control.'
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Whether the story is true or not, it's no secret Irving thinks and acts differently than most. A report on Monday suggested he has essentially "ghosted" the Celtics, similar to how he cut off communication with the Cavaliers before his trade request.
If he constantly peppers coaches and teammates with these types of questions, maybe it's a good thing communication between the two sides have been scarce lately.
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