Welp, it happened. He finally did it. Kyrie Irving carried himself like a martyr for the entirety of the NBA season, and now it’s official. He thinks he’s a martyr.
Speaking on the ETCS Podcast with Kevin Durant and Eddie Gonzalez, Irving likened his situation to that of a Thomas Becket, Martin Luther King Jr., or Emily Davison.
“I had the opportunity to play away games still, but there was no plan in place, there was no vision of how it was going to work for our team. And I think that really impacted not just me, but a lot of people. Just had to sit in that hot seat for a little bit and deal with it. The life of a martyr, bro.”
Excuse the fact that — as my editor pointed out in Slack — martyrs are by definition dead, ask the family members of deceased anti-vaxxers how well their martyrdom treated them.
Here at Deadspin, we’ve covered Irving’s idiocy at length, so in lieu of the usual few paragraphs full of outrage and jokes followed by a (hopefully) clever sign-off, I’m going to try something different.
The most outlandish thing he said in that quote isn’t his admission that more people than just himself were impacted by his unvaccinated status. (Do you think he came to the realization that being unvaccinated can have a broad impact all by himself, or did someone show him a list of all the people who were contract-traced as a result of him walking around with visible COVID the way you can see odor emanating from Pigpen?) The most asinine aspect of Irving’s rambling nonsense is dropping “bro” after describing yourself as a martyr.
Using “bro” in a sentence is reserved for snowboarders on a gondola during a powder day, or frat guys describing a hot chick at an EDM concert, or the Tracksuit Mafia in Hawkeye.
I mean, it would make sense if it’s a tic in Irving’s speech. Anytime I say “bro” in casual conversation, it’s to make fun of bros who say “bro” all the time. Honestly, “Kyrie Irving: Bro or martyr?” sounds like a solid investigative journalism piece.
However, I’m not going to do that either. I’m just going to rattle off a bunch of phrases that should never end with “bro.”
- Doctor to patient: “You have Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, bro.”
- Parent to child: “You were adopted, bro.”
- Maury to guest: “You ARE the father, bro.”
- Spider-Man to Tony Stark: “I don’t feel so good, bro.”
- Waiter to diner: “How would you like your New York strip cooked, bro?”
- Employee to boss: “When do you need that by, bro?”
- Boyfriend to girlfriend: “I gave you the clap, bro.”
- Girlfriend to boyfriend: “I’m pregnant, bro.”
- Supreme Court to America: “We’re overturning Roe v. Wade, bro.”
- John the Apostle to his flock: “If God is all you have, you have all you need, bro.”
- Aesop: “A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth, bro.”
- Kyrie Irving to the hosts of the ETCS Podcast: “The life of a martyr, bro.”
That’s it. That’s all I have. I wasted all my creative juices on the bro quotes, so no witty last line. You may return to your day.