NBA
Kyrie Irving Whines About Another Fan but Can’t Get Them Thrown out in Philly
Tim Crean started writing about sports in 2016 and joined Sportscasting in 2021. He excels with his versatile coverage of the NFL and soccer landscape, as well as his expertise breaking down sports media, which stems from his many years downloading podcasts before they were even cool and countless hours spent listening to Mike & The Mad Dog and The Dan Patrick Show, among other programs. As a longtime self-professed sports junkie who even played DII lacrosse at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, Tim loves reading about all the latest sports news every day and considers it a dream to write about sports professionally. He's a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan from Western New York who mistakenly thought, back in the early '90s, that his team would be in the Super Bowl every year. He started following European soccer — with a Manchester City focus — in the early 2000s after spending far too much time playing FIFA. When he's not enjoying a round of golf or coaching youth soccer and flag football, Tim likes reading the work of Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Chuck Klosterman, and Tom Wolfe.
All posts by Tim CreanUpdated30 Mar 2023
Kyrie Irving on the Dallas Mavericks is not going well. The team took yet another L on Wednesday against the Philadelphia 76ers. The Mavs are now a game out of the play-in tournament with just five left to play. The only thing that was working for the overly sensitive star was getting fans kicked out of games when they talked trash to him, but in Philly, he couldn’t even get that done.
Kyrie Irving tried and failed to get another fan kicked out
Kyrie Irving doesn’t get along with NBA fans almost as much as he doesn’t get along with the teams he plays for.
Irving has always been sensitive. He’s long-railed against the way poor NBA players are treated by the league, the teams that pay them millions, the media, and the fans who spend their hard-earned money to come out and watch him play.
But in recent years, his rabbit ears have become even more fine-tuned.
On March 26, in a game against the Charlotte Hornets, Irving didn’t like a fan chirping at him. So, the Mavs guard stopped the game, walked the referee down to the opposite end of the court, and got a fan kicked out of the game.
In a spectator-shot video of the incident, you can see Irving demanding the fan “apologize” for something and demanding. “say it to my face.”
After the incident, Irving explained to reporters what happened in his mind.
“He just called me on my name. So, I just had to make sure I looked him eye-to-eye, see if he would say it to my face,” Irving told reporters. A lot of fans say things while you’re turning your head or say it in the crowd because they can get away with it. But the majority of the time, if I can look a fan in the face and see if they really want to say that to me, you know. So, he yelled it, and I handled it, so next thing.”
Just three days later, Irving tried the same ploy again in Philadelphia during a 116-108 loss to the 76ers. The Mavericks guard again walked the referee over to where a fan was sitting who apparently said something Irving didn’t like.
Only this time, referee Tyler Ford wasn’t having it. Ford quickly wrangled Irving back to where the inbounds play was about to happen and restarted the game without much delay. And in true Philly fashion, the boos rained down for the disgruntled star.
It hasn’t just been on the court either that Irving is whining about NBA fans. He recently took to Twitch to complain about how fans think they know him “All from seeing me for three hours.”
He also opined that fans want to know, “What’s Ky gonna do this summer? Does Ky like Dallas? What happened in Brooklyn? What happened in Boston? What happened in Cleveland? Why did you leave LeBron [James]? Why did you leave Jayson [Tatum]? Why did you leave KD [Kevin Durant]? Why did you leave all these people?”
Irving then whined that everyone thinks he’s the locker room “cancer” when there are 15 guys on every NBA team. In fairness, though, he is the one who laid out the laundry list of organizations and fellow superstars that he’s submarined in the last seven years right before making that complaint.
If Kyrie Irving keeps this up and doesn’t justify the headache it is to put up to him with stellar play on the court, it looks like you’ll soon be able to add Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks to the list of superstars and NBA franchises Irving has torched.
