It’s fitting, really, that the biggest week of Kyrie Irving’s career, his stepping forth into the brightest spotlight, his arrival on the grandest stage, should directly involve the element of surprise.
This is “Uncle Drew” after all. This is the guy who chose his first NBA persona by throwing on a fake beard and aging himself 50 years, all in service of creating the priceless moment when an unwitting audience realizes that the dude who resembles their grandfather is about to cross them up and get to the basket at will (That, and selling some high-fructose carbonation of course).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DnKOc6FISU
It’s funny then that Irving has staged another Uncle Drew stunt in these NBA Finals. No, he hasn’t dressed up as an over the hill baller from a bygone era. But for the first two games of the series, a rather convincing argument could be made that he played like one. Irving was, without fear of hyperbole, rather atrocious when things got started at Oracle Arena. His 26 points in Game 1 obscured an exceedingly-inefficient performance as the Cavs point guard made just 7 of 22 attempts from the field.
That was followed up with an even uglier Game 2 outing, one that saw him shoot 5 for 14 from the field, fail to get to the free throw line once, and commit three turnovers to just a single assist. It added up to a plus/minus of -26 and a chorus of horrified headlines across the sports media world. Over at FiveThirtyEight, Kyle Wagner documented the damage being done by Irving’s notoriously lackluster defense. At The Cauldron, Kevin Ferrigan broke down the extent to which box scores have been inflating his true ability for most of his career. At Deadspin, Kevin Draper asked the question that seemed, for a few days at least, like it might define the 2016 Finals: “How Good is Kyrie Irving, Really?””
Of course, if that same question was posed right now, chances are the answer would be a little bit different. Irving has come to life in the last week, scoring 30 or more in three straight games, capped off Monday by a 41 point, 17 for 24, captivating display of shooting and ball handling that had everyone asking a different question: Was this guy playing possum to start the series?
That’s preposterous of course, but one can be forgiven for struggling to understand one of the most mercurial NBA Finals performances of all time. For two games, Kyrie Irving was the avatar for every bad basketball tendency of this era of analytics. Costume or not, Uncle Drew had become a ball-hogging, hero-balling, offense-jamming, idly-defending liability. If you put your ear to the ground, you could already hear the trade rumor mill begin to rumble.
Then suddenly, as though a switch had been flipped, Irving transformed into his best self. In Game 5 he was exactly what the Cavaliers have always longed for on the offensive end, a guard who can knock down long range shots and improve the team’s spacing, a ball-handler capable of improvising when the team’s movement bogs down, and a playmaker capable of carrying things for a stretch when LeBron James comes back down to Earth. Of course, both Kyrie and The King were at their absolute best on Monday night, and if the pair can sustain that level of excellence, the Cavs may actually have a chance to come from behind and spoil the Warriors’ coronation.
“Just trusting the game,” said Irving to the press when asked for his own explanation about the turnaround, “Trusting the game plan, trusting my teammates. And the spacing out there tonight allowed me to get to certain spots on the floor where I could be effective.”
So where does that leave us? Well, it’d only be natural, given what we’ve seen thus far, to be asking which of these players is the real Kyrie Irving. The dismal ball-stopper or the electric scorer? Of course, anyone who’s been watching the fifth-year pro from the beginning, from the truly dismal days in Cleveland before LeBron’s return, knows that the question is flawed from the jump.
Kyrie’s game has always been defined by duality. It has long been a mixture of tantalizing talent and frustrating deficiencies. He is the player who, in March of last year, rose to anyone’s definition of that most tired term, “clutch”, scoring a career-high 57 points, including 15 straight in the closing minutes, to help seal an overtime victory. But then, he is also the player who finds himself, on more than a few occasions, made to be the scapegoat after a night in which he fails to get his own offense engaged.
If nothing else, it occasionally makes for good theater and entertainingly awkward press conferences.
If you are searching for a steadying influence, a predictable contribution, a picture of on-court consistency, you would probably do well to look elsewhere. That has never been Kyrie Irving. In some sense, as fans, we’re all better off for it. After all, a tour-de-force like Monday only comes at the hands of a player willing to take some chances. On another night, one where Irving’s jumper refuses to fall, he’s a tad sloppy off the dribble, and perhaps a certain rim-protecting trash talker isn’t suspended for a swipe to the nether-regions, then Kyrie’s dream game could have just as easily become a nightmare. The Warriors would already be planning their Bay Area parade route.
That is the knife’s edge upon which Irving’s game lies. For all the advancements we’ve made in the ways we understand basketball, all our investment in motion-tracking cameras, all our appreciation of PER, Box Plus/Minus, and True Shooting Percentage, it’s still a rather straightforward equation when you get right down to it. Make shots and you’re to be celebrated. Miss them and be prepared to have your training, your style, heck, your very character put through the ringer.
In recent years, Pepsi has picked their spots with the Uncle Drew commercials. Probably in part because it’s hard to recapture the fun of the very first outing, when the reveal was such an authentic thrill. The shelf-life of the series has been extended, as one might expect, by bringing in additional guest stars. The concept will continue because there’s still money to be made, but there’s no recapturing genuine surprise once the trick has been revealed to the world.
Similarly, it’s hard to imagine that any result from Irving in Thursday night’s Game 6 could actually surprise us. Another pantheon performance? Certainly doable. A crash back down to Earth? Eminently possible. Through all the highs and lows, Kyrie Irving will most certainly be judged by what happens last. No one is more aware of it than he is.
“That’s the only thing that’s on our mind right now,” said Irving on Monday night, “We’re not satisfied. We understand the magnitude of what Game 6 means for us at home, and we know that it will be an incredible level that they’re going to play at, and we have to play at an even better level.”
If that’s possible, heck, Uncle Drew might just be wearing a ring in his next commercial. Now that we think of it, he should throw on a pair of the old-man “Chef Curry” sneakers too. That’d be a rather excellent burn.
