Last year, Kyrie Irving caused quite a lot of controversy when he shared an Amazon link to a film that contained some shocking antisemitic messaging. He initially defended his actions and even kept the link up on his social media, seemingly refusing to apologize. Irving eventually did post an apology after he was suspended by the Brooklyn Nets, but it was easy to question the sincerity of the apology. And recently, Irving made a move that makes that apology look even less genuine.
As The Athletic’s Sam Amick noted in a podcast published Tuesday and Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach noted back in January, Kyrie Irving actually deleted that apology from social media before requesting a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. It’s not clear when exactly Irving made the decision to delete the apology, but it is no longer present on his Instagram account.
While we don’t know for sure why Irving deleted the apology from social media, he was pretty defensive about his words and actions once he returned from his suspension, claiming that he was “misinterpreted and misunderstood” after sharing the controversial post on his Twitter account.
We will now wait to see if Irving will ever address the decision to delete the post.