It should have never arrived at this point in the first place; it should've taken the first exit, instead of continuing on the highway of no-return.
No punishment
No list of demands
No public apology or judgement
Nothing.
Instead, he ran his [unfiltered] stream of consciousness out into the public forum, and what he's failed to be cognizant of, time and time again, is that he has no control over anyone's perception and the exception they take of what he chooses to put out there: when he proclaimed the Earth was flat; when he posted an Alex Jones monologue alluding to COVID being the creation of the NWO; the infinite loop of anti-vax ducktales; to now, this documentary that manipulates and revises history, is inherently [Black] self-hatred, and antisemitic.
All of this has been a building towards a crescendo - a thunderous boom that only now has caused y'all keyboard militants to wake up out your slumber, to start taking this shyt seriously, and stop treating him as if he's the protagonist in his own Blaxploitation film, where he goes on quests around the world to find out false-truths on some Anaconda Malt Liquor connect-the-dots shyt.
For a lot of y'all, you don't really give a fukk about him like that. You just wanted to vicariously live through him to see how many times he could cheat death. You wanted to see how many times he could enrage the 'white liberal media', how many times he could fight the mainstream with his own misinformation/disinformation, and how many times he could be an IG martyr for whatever social/political outfit he picked out of his wardrobe that day.
Which is the terrifying irony in y'all only coming to his defense after he was punished -
Y'all were unwillingly participants in leading him down the path that got him reprimanded by being advocates of him "standing on his square" in the first place. Y'all were daring him, hell, y'all were double daring him to see how far he would go with this. Why would you cheer him on to stick to his beliefs when it was only going to result in his demise? Were y'all that naïve in thinking that the Nets/NBA weren't going to push back? Did y'all think that he could really keep on bending and bending his situation without it breaking?
Don't break out in collective chant for someone to hold their position if you aren't going to account for the repercussions of their actions.
When if you really gave a fukk about him, you wouldn't want him to sacrifice himself for something that isn't worth standing for. This isn't taking a knee during The Star-Spangled Banner to fight social injustice and systematic oppression; this isn't an orchestrated walk-out in protest of police brutality, this isn't a Black-caucus to oppose conscription to a War.
This is no more than a confused negro, who's a self-admitted -
"'I'm a big conspiracy theorist. You can't tell me anything."- Kyrie Irving.
He's told you who he is, so don't make him out to be something or stand for something anything other than that.
Of course, he's free to explore whatever meaning of his life he wants, but in case y'all need reminding, he's an employee and representative of the NBA, and has a platform with an outreach of millions, so he has to move in accordance to that. He can't be a puppet in the rhetoric that rips a black hole in our society and think that shyt won't catch up with him eventually.
This was the straw that broke the camel's back for the Nets/NBA, and their response ran parallel to that. They came down hard because this was an accumulation of all the strain and burden they've had to put up with as a result of his actions over the last couple of seasons. They came down hard because instead of him apologizing when confronted with the nature of this material that he endorsed, he continued his act of defiance and proudly juelzed into a position of rambling sour nothings.
This 30-year-old grown ass man got punished for promoting inimical fairytales, which he initially didn't want to admit fault for. He didn't get punished for taking a stand against a plight that affects the Black community.
I want to make this distinction when contextualizing the punishment he received because we should not be beholden to defend athletes/entertainers of our ilk for the sake of, because where does it end? Do we continue to defend Kyrie the next time he's punished over something that the rabbit hole he continues to venture down, is more sinister? Do we come to the defense every time a Black athlete/entertainer gets himself into a trap over anything and everything that only concerns their own personal beliefs and actions? Do we come to the defense every time a Black athlete/entertainer drags us into a scandal, where we become the face of their indiscretion, by proxy?
What about all the other Black players in the league that have been forced into a dilemma of weighing up their livelihoods, their image and their morals, into taking a position over this. What about the NBA as a Black league-entity that has now become an effigy of antisemitism? Don't you think the entire focus on the league should be about our issues as a minority, instead of trying to defend itself against something, we, ourselves, have spent so long fighting against?
The more we defend these types, the more power we give to their position, which inadvertently puts us all in a worse position.
I hope next time Kyrie comes out with some smart-dumb shyt, that we all denounce it, for our own good and his.
