Kyrie Irving is a multimillionaire with any number of informational and educational resources available to him. He has spent time at one of the country’s best universities and repeatedly said he wants to work through the next few summers to graduate with his degree. And he appears to seriously and sincerely—without a hint of irony—believe that the world is flat.
Irving first discussed this belief two days ago on Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye’s podcast. Even after his teammates tried to tell him that Earth is in fact spherical, he persisted:
“For what I’ve known for many years and what I’ve been taught is that the Earth is round, but if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move and the fact that — can you really think of us rotating around the sun, and all planets align, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these planets and stuff like this.”
If you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel... there is an answer there, and it is not this one.
“Everything that was put in front of me, I had to be like, ‘Oh, this is all a facade.’ Like, this is all something that they ultimately want me to believe in … but now there is a certain aspect of life in which I want to tell people about, which is this true journey of really becoming a complete individual and total freedom of thought. Do you know what I’m saying? Question things, but even if an answer doesn’t come back, you’re perfectly fine with that, because you were never living in that particular truth. There’s a falseness in stories and things that people want you to believe and ultimately what they throw in front of us.”
Skepticism is hardly a bad thing. Skepticism can be a very good thing! And there are a lot of very simple things you can do to address that skepticism and see for yourself that Earth is round.
Lest anyone think he was just joking around with his teammates on the podcast, he doubled down yesterday when asked by reporters.
He was not clear on whether or not the Harlem Globetrotters’ name makes them a conspiracy, too.
Update (Sunday, 10 a.m.): After Kyrie said he had been more interested in the conversation his quotes sparked than in the beliefs themselves, NBA commissioner Adam Silver weighed in: