Kyrie Irving says he heard he was traded to the Celtics while filming ‘Uncle Drew’
"I kind of had to decompress. Then I went back in and finished up our dancing."
On Aug. 22, 2017, a day that Celtics and Cavaliers executives spent hashing out a deal to send Kyrie Irving from Cleveland to Boston, the All-Star point guard was on a movie set dressed as an old man.In an interview with Boston.com, Irving revealed exactly how things went down on the set of “Uncle Drew.”During press interviews for the film, two of Irving’s co-stars, NBA Hall of Fame shooting guard Reggie Miller and actor Lil Rel Howery, shared seemingly contradictory versions of how Irving heard about the trade. Miller said last October that he and several other cast members got alerts on their phones while filming a scene in the protagonist’s 1970s-era van, but Irving didn’t have his phone on him. Howery, meanwhile, said in March that Irving’s friend came to tell him about the trade while he was filming a scene in a nightclub. As it turns out, both accounts are true.
Kyrie Irving as Uncle Drew in “Uncle Drew.”
According to Irving, when Miller and the other cast members got alerts on their phones in the van, they told him right away.
“They were like, ‘Congrats, man, you just got traded,’” Irving said. “And I was like, ‘What? What do you mean?’”
But Irving also said that the trade hadn’t been made official yet. That came later, when the cast was shooting a ridiculous dance scene set in a nightclub. At that point, his friend came in to bring word from his agent that the trade was officially complete. When he heard the news, Irving ran off of the set in a whirl of emotions.
But only for a moment.
“I kind of had to decompress,” Irving said. “Then I went back in and finished up our dancing.”
