Kyrie Irving has played just 11 games in a Brooklyn Nets uniform and it is unclear when he'll return from his shoulder injury. He might go the route of surgery, he might not. It's anybody's guess how this will end and the longer things remain murky, the more one has to wonder whether or not Irving is being entirely truthful about his injury and his sincerity to get back on the court.
If Irving didn't have a history of being a head case, I wouldn't be writing this blog post. I might instead be writing about how terrible the Atlanta Hawks have been this season. But I'm not writing about the Hawks. I'm writing about Irving and the Nets. Precisely because he's the kind of guy to pull off a stunt like not being honest with the Nets about the severity or lack of severity of his shoulder injury.
As for how the Nets can proceed, I'm not sure there's a whole lot they can do. Irving when healthy has been balling out this year, averaging 28.5 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game. Those are really good numbers. On top of that, they're still waiting for the return of Kevin Durant, who is missing the entire season due to a ruptured right Achilles tendon that he suffered in the NBA Finals last year with the Warriors. Irving and Durant were a packaged deal to Brooklyn, so they really can't trade Irving if they want any hope of keeping Durant for the future.
The long and short of it is the Nets do have a Kyrie Irving problem and what's worse is that he seems to hold all the cards. They just have to hope that he's being truthful about his injury and that he does actually want to get back on the court as soon as possible. Otherwise, this whole Irving/Durant experiment could blow up in their face before it even really got started.
As Hunter S. Thompson once wrote: Buy the ticket, take the ride. The Nets bought their ticket and now they have to take the ride.
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