Former ‘Flat Earther’ Kyrie Irving gets pointed about Steph Curry’s Moon musings
The Celtics guard is no fan of the obsession with athletes' idle thoughts.
For plenty of people, Kyrie Irving will always in some capacity be, “The Basketball Player Who Thinks The Earth is Flat.” He’s got a problem with that.
And not just because of his own experiences.
“There are political things going on. There are so many higher things in the totem pole of society that matter to human beings but, hey, if Steph Curry says that he doesn’t believe in the Moon (landing), it’s the thing all over,” Irving said at the Celtics practice facility on Tuesday. “It’s on CNN, and they say we’re just jocks. We’re just athletes. But it’s on your channel. So … you know what I mean?”
That was the capper to a more than two-minute response to a question from the Globe’s Gary Washburn, who asked Irving about athletes thinking outside the box and talking non-basketball subjects.
Curry said on the ‘Winging It’ podcast that he didn’t think humans had ever walked on the Moon. That it was part of a larger, light-hearted discussion of conspiracy theories — “literally out of an hour-and-10-minute podcast, that five-second comment,” he told ESPN — was lost in the sea of reactions and outrage.
The two-time MVP and three-time champ ended up scoring an invite to Johnson Space Center in Houston to view evidence and gave the Kings a tremendous trolling opportunity to play Moon landing footage during Golden State’s pregame introductions, but there was plenty of invective as well. Curry’s comments were called “irresponsible” by ESPN’s Max Kellerman. On “Pardon The Interruption,” Tony Kornheiser declared “it’s a very small step to becoming a Holocaust denier or a slavery denier.”
Famed astronaut Scott Kelly was more good-natured in his criticism, but made clear statements like Curry’s — even when Curry was “obviously joking,” as he’s since said unequivocally — have consequences.
“When people believe [flat Earth or moon landing conspiracies], they believe the other things that are more important like climate change not being real or vaccines and 9/11 being a conspiracy theory,” Kelly told Curry during an Instagram chat between the two.
Plenty quickly drew a line to Irving, who also made headlines in a podcast with fellow players. Just prior to the 2017 All-Star Game, Irving emphatically declared a flat Earth is “not even a conspiracy theory.” It just was.
From then through this past October, when he apologized “to all the science teachers, everybody coming up to me like, ‘You know I’ve got to reteach my whole curriculum?'” at the Forbes Under 30 summit in Boston, the comment became part of who he was. Like Curry, apologies and statements about simply wanting to have a discussion won’t change that.
Thus the question on Tuesday, and thus this lengthy response it sparked.
Kyrie was asked by @GwashburnGlobe about Steph’s moon-landing comments, and he shared tons of thoughts – here’s 2 minutes of his response: pic.twitter.com/romcW6ZUee
— Chris Grenham (@chrisgrenham) December 18, 2018
“Sometimes, I feel like, even myself, I feel like you can speak ahead of yourself whether or not you believe it or not. You end up getting caught because you’re on this false platform of a thing where you’re not even a human being anymore. You’re now extrapolated for all the information that you know and think, and now you have to fit a mold of something that you’re clearly not. You’re more than just a basketball player that puts it in the hoop and then they subject you to being just that. It’s a lot unfair at times.
“Obviously, we’re not as educated, in terms of schooling, in terms of knowledge going to school to these universities as everyone (with) four-year degrees in marketing or business or anything like that, so I think probably that misjudgment, it’s warranted. It’s natural. Everyone feels like they have a place in this world to kind of question anything or question somebody. Look at what social media’s done nowadays. Anybody can say anything on Twitter, but one thing someone says with a check next to their name, it’s the biggest thing going.
“So nothing’s really original. It’s just history repeating itself all over again. We’ve had people in history say some things that they’ve believed and they’ve stuck with their whole entire lives, whether they be prominent individuals in society or not, so you know, I try not to pay attention to that mold at all. I try to not pay attention to whether it’s insulting or not. I don’t live my life based on biases or judgments, nor do I base it on thinking or judging someone else for what they believe in as well.
“It’s society, though. It’s where we live in America, where people say [crap] all the time about one another. And it’s mean, bad, kids see it. Everyone gets a piece of it, and then it’s the next story. Next thing that’s coming out of someone’s mouth, and there’s world hunger going on.”
For those like Irving who simply “love the debate,” that’s a treasure trove of new discussion topics. There’s certainly plenty for Curry and Irving to talk about when the Warriors come to Boston on Jan. 26.
