Kyrie Irving is putting humanity first

Before we talk about Kyrie Irving the basketball player, let’s make sure we start with Kyrie Irving the human being. If we’ve learned any one thing about Irving through his personal leave, it’s that humanity has and always will take precedence over basketball.

As it should.

Irving donated $1.5 million to WNBA players who otherwise would not have been paid while sitting out of the league’s restart last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He donated $323,000 toward feeding New York City families at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. He partnered with Nike to donate 17 pallets of food and 50,000 masks to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, of which he identifies. Most recently, he bought a home for the family of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer that kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes despite Floyd having died after

That’s not all.

From Dec. 1-11, Irving made donations and charitable gestures every single day.

He donated money to Brooklyn’s Moms of Black Boys United for Social Change. He donated money as a reward to a Bronx family of four that gritted their way from a homeless shelter into permanent housing. He paid the college tuition for nine high school seniors who committed to Lincoln University, a historically black college (HBCU). He donated school supplies to 25 teenage Kenyan girls through an organization dedicated to advocating for women and girls impacted by past trauma. He donated 100 book bags with personal care items to teens and young adults at Newark’s Covenant House shelter.

He donated soil to Greater Newark Conservancy. He donated funds to Christine’s Kitchen, a food pantry and soup kitchen in West Orange, NJ.

In total, Irving has done more for the world than he could have done for the Nets in any of the six games he missed on personal leave. Irving has been scrutinized for his absence. His commitment to basketball has been questioned, his private life made public.

The world is asking Kyrie Irving to be a basketball player first and a human second, as evidenced by the outrage following Irving’s decision to leave the team for almost two weeks. It’s an understandable request from society on one front: Irving is paid an obscene amount of money to play basketball — a four-year contract worth up to $141 million total — and traditional logic places priority on finances first.

But if Irving is anything, it’s untraditional. It’s not that he could care less about basketball; the sport has given him the platform to create the change he wants to see. It’s that the world outside of basketball — the world most important to him — is crumbling, and he has struggled to process how he can best help put it back together.

That much is admirable. That much is human.

Irving is not without fault. He violated the NBA’s coronavirus health and safety protocol by attending a family birthday party in a crowded space without wearing a mask. In a league that has postponed games nearly every day amid spiking COVID cases across its 30 teams, Irving’s actions in that instance were unsafe and irresponsible.

Those actions ultimately cost him upwards of $850,000: about $800,000 in game checks, and another 50 bands in a fine for violating league policy. He declined to comment on violating COVID protocol, noting he’s “addressed everybody that needed to be addressed” and is happy to be back competing with his teammates.

Irving will be happy to know that the total of his forfeited salary and fine is split between the player’s union (which he serves as a vice president) and the league, and both will use the funds to make charitable donations.

As a result, Irving wins, even when he loses.

“There’s a deeper level of emotions that I have for helping and serving people around the world. And I’ve done it since I was a kid. I’ll continue on way after basketball,” he said. “There’s nothing normal about this life that I live. It’s just something I’ve come to accept and embrace as, let me use this as a tool to be able to change things that I want to see in the world, and I have to be honest with myself about how much energy I give that, and how many others I’m impacting.”

Irving’s heart is also torn, and you can see it on his face: He has felt the weight of the world on his shoulders since well before, and especially after Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. He has openly admitted his life’s work off the basketball court will be greater than his accomplishments on it. Given the list above in a 10-day span alone, that is already the case.

Irving, remember, reportedly suggested players not return to play in the Orlando bubble at all, that he was willing to sacrifice his money for the greater good of all people and that his peers should feel the same. Irving now says he has learned he needs to create clear separation between what’s happening on the basketball court and what’s going on in the world.

“If you don’t create that distinction, then it’s easy to feel the weight of the world while you’re going out there and playing,” Irving said. “So, I’d be lying sitting here and saying I don’t feel what’s going on in the world, nor am I paying attention to it. I just have a huge responsibility, I feel, to continue to serve my community and the underserved.”

Irving ultimately decided he was not the best-equipped person to handle the issues about which he feels most passionate.

“I called for help, and now I have just so many mentors and so many people reaching out and just taking things off my plate that were never mine in the first place and they are better-suited for that position,” he said. “So I’ll play my role in this big team of change in the world, and others will do the same.”

Irving’s words and actions are aligned: He wants to make this world a better place, use his platform and salary to do so, play basketball at a high level and have fun doing it. What Irving has learned is that it’s hard to have fun on the court when the world off of it is crumbling.

What’s clear is the Nets’ star point guard is trying to do his part to create the change he wants to see in this country and on this planet. In defense of humanity, the world needs to let him.