Kyrie Irving is an incredibly good basketball player and also possibly a completely insane person.
The Boston Celtics guard has long been a star on the court, but off the court his views have been a little… look, let’s just say “unconventional.”
Irving’s stance as a flat earther first surfaced in February, the then-Cleveland Cavalier dropped this mind-bender of a quote on teammate Richard Jefferson‘s podcast:
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 the planets align, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these planets and stuff like this.
Since that quote – and the subsequent various dives into Irving’s conspiracy-laden beliefs – the at-one-time Uncle Drew has lightened up a bit on the idea, instead suggesting that he’s simply keeping an “open mind” about things.
Now, however, he’s completely doubled-down on that by explaining casually that he’s only trying to form his own opinion because, as we all know, there are no actual photos of the earth in existence.
I uh… yep.
Irving, speaking with UCONN women’s head coach Gino Auriemma, stated that he never intended to bash the science, rather it’s just the natural questioning everyone does when they find out all photos of earth are fake as hell.
The whole intent behind it, Coach, it wasn’t to bash science. It wasn’t to like have the intent of starting a rage and be seen as this insane individual. When I started seeing comments and things about universal truths that I had known, like I had questions.
When I started actually doing research on my own and figuring out that there is no real picture of Earth, not one real picture of Earth — and we haven’t been back to the moon since 1961 or 1969 — it becomes like conspiracy, too.
Well, look. When you’re an elite NBA star rocking the kind of paycheque that Kyrie is, you can pretty much do or think whatever the hell you want in your spare time.
More power to you, Kyrie. Keep chasing that tinfoil rainbow.
