Kyrie Irving: Comments about calling LeBron could hurt team chemistry

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Kyrie Irving addressed the media about reaching out to former teammate LeBron James following the Boston Celtics’ impressive win against the Toronto Raptors.

Last night, Kyrie Irving spoke to members of the media and perhaps the most shocking content that the interview produced was that Irving contacted former teammate and shadow-caster, LeBron James.

“Obviously this is something that was a big deal for me,” Irving said. “I had to call Bron,” Irving continued, with a sheepish grin. “And tell him I apologize for being that young player that wanted everything at his finger tips and wanted everything to be at my threshold. I wanted to be the guy that led us to championships, I wanted to be the leader, I wanted to be all that.”

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Now on the surface, it appears that Irving is doing his due diligence as the undisputed leader of this young Celtics team. He’s calling a guy who’s done it all to give him advice that can hopefully translate to the issues that the Celtics are facing this season so they can turn it around.

However, it seems like Irving is going about this the wrong way. There is no doubt that his intentions are positive and that he wants nothing more than this team’s success, but his openness with the media may be hurting the team.

With what he said to the media he was basically saying “I was young and didn’t know any better and LeBron had to deal with me, so I called him because I’m dealing with guys that are young and don’t know any better now,” and that isn’t the way you help a team riddled with internal issues.

Irving doesn’t appear as if he was attempting to stir the pot, but his lack common sense may have gotten the better of him. By making comments like this he opens the door for outside speculation from media and fans and that is how things can get blown out of proportion or misinterpreted and of course the players hear what is being said.

Irving should be taking that advice from the best player on the planet and directly relaying those principles to the young guys on the roster or he should be changing his own behavior to set an example. He needs to act a little more like a leader and a little less like a celebrity.

Now I do give him credit for owning up to some of the mistakes he has made as a leader.

"“I did a poor job of setting an example for the young guys of what it’s like to get something out of your teammates and you go in and you say something publicly and it ends up being received in so many different ways. You never know how fragile or what guys are going through and you say things like that and you’re expecting results but at the same time I should have kept it in-house. So going forward I want to test these young guys but not publicly like that and I want to get the best out of them but not publicly like that”"

He says a lot of good things, however I wish he had taken his own advice about not wanting to speak publicly about certain things when he made those comments about calling LeBron.

He is clearly aware that things can be “received in so many different ways” and “you never know how fragile” guys are, so why even chance it?

Telling everyone that you had to call LeBron, who knows a thing or two about dealing with inexperienced players who don’t know any better, can clearly be interpreted many different ways.

Who knows how the young guys on the Celtics took that. It would be one thing if he went directly to them, but by telling the media he may have opened the door for the young guys (Jaylen Brown especially) to over think things.

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Sometimes it seems as if Kyrie needs to get his ego in check and keep things “in-house” as he put it.

Kyrie is a tremendous basketball player, but a terrible diplomat.

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