Writing “I AM FREE. Thank you God … I am” on your shoes because you’re out millions is one way to look at things, and clearly that’s how Irving is rationalizing it. It’s also the same way Ye approached getting excommunicated from Adidas.

Great minds don’t think alike because if they did, we’d all still think the world was flat. But the minds of conspiracy theorists and zealots do. That’s why debunked stereotypes and COVID still persist and people like Kyrie and Kanye can openly share and say antisemitic shit without getting fully jettisoned from popular culture.

Of course, Irving doesn’t think getting dumped from Nike is a bad thing. He probably Googled “Why is Nike bad?” to make himself feel better, and then saw Ye telling society “Gotcha!” like he wanted to get canceled, and thought, “This is perfect, I do feel better.”

Even if that’s not what happened, and Irving came up with this solution on his own, he has to know people are going to make comparisons. The Venn diagram of NBA and hip-hop is pretty big, and Kanye and Irving literally spouted Nazi tropes within a week of each other. I wrote about it at the time, and now once the last thread of the Irving-Nike partnership is officially clipped, he more or less parrots Kanye again? Either Irving is trolling us, knowing we’ll make the Ye connection, or he’s trolling us for real like Kanye. It’s one or the other, and both are equally stupid.

Once you get outed for the abhorrent human being that you are — which is the definition of canceling — you can say whatever the fuck you want as long as people give you a platform. Ye has to resort to Alex Jones and TikTok, and Irving is in NBA arenas, showing that he’s learned all the wrong things.

Kyrie clearly got his suspension summer reading from the Donda Academy. I know it’s since been shuttered, but Ye is still holding classes, and his pupils are still watching.