A new development on Kyrie Irving's flat Earth theory

All of this hoopla started back in February when Kyrie was a guest on Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye's podcast, Road Trippin', which is a show that the two players used to do whenever they travelled away from Cleveland for games. They no longer do the show because Richard Jefferson was dropped by the Cavaliers last month, and is now a member of the Denver Nuggets. Anyhow, on this particular episode with Kyrie, a major topic of discussion was conspiracy theories. Someone joked about the Earth being flat, and Kyrie, in all seriousness, corrected them, saying that the Earth actually was flat. It can be found right around the sixteen minute mark of the pod. He said: 

The Earth is flat. I'm telling you, it's right in front of our faces. They lied to us. For what I've known for as many years, and what I've come to believe, what I've been taught, is that the Earth is round. But I mean if you really think about it from a landscape as 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 aligned, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what's going on with these planets and stuff like this. There is no concrete information except for information that they're giving us. They're particularly putting you in the direction of what to believe and what not to believe. The truth is right there, you just got to go searching for it. 

If you had a hard time following that blurb, it's because it makes no sense. It's just a few planetary vocabulary words thrown together. My favorite part is when Kyrie says that to find the truth, you have to go searching for it. A.K.A. typing into Google Search, "proof that the Earth is flat." If it were that easy to prove something, then you could just Google anything that you wanted to be true, and say, "Yea I saw it online. I did the research. It's real." I'm about to ask the internet about Santa Claus' verity.

His original comments obviously created a media stir, so he went back onto the Road Trippin' podcast to clear things up. He held firm on his beliefs, and got real with us about respecting other people's opinions.

It's OK to think something that, I guess, the majority wouldn't think. I just didn't like the fact that us being able to celebrate our individuality and things that we ultimately hold on to, and just because we don't believe what the world thinks or what the majority thinks, then why punish that? That's the only thing I felt like that got misconstructed is just that it's OK to believe one thing. Its ok to have your own thought and be able to function and be able to formulate your own thoughts and opinions and still be able to convey them to other people.

The thing is, that there's a difference between opinion and fact. Kyrie seems to have blurred the line between the two. Here, he's explaining how people can decide for themselves what is what. Well, with that rationale, some one could point at a dog and say, "that's an elephant," because it's okay to formulate your own thoughts and have different opinions than the majority. This type of stuff will get you imprisoned, Galileo style!

This is why people go to school! So that we're all on the same page when it comes to identifying things and knowing what is real/not real. Kindergarteners are taught that a firetruck is red. That color is called red. If someone said, "no it's blue," they'd be wrong. Kyrie is encouraging kids to come up with their own opinions on facts, even though they will be wrong and contradict said facts. What's your angle, pal!?



Then he was traded to the Boston Celtics in that blockbuster deal with Isaiah Thomas, and all of a sudden, the whole thing was a joke. A giant scheme to manipulate people into doing research or something like that. On the Toucher and Rich Show, he said:

Look, look. Here it is. All I want to do is be able to have the open conversation. It was all an exploitation tactic. It literally spun the world, your guys' world. It spun it into a frenzy and proved exactly what I thought it would do in terms of how it all works. It created division, or, literally stand up there and let all these people throw tomatoes at me, or have somebody think I'm somehow a different intellectual person because I believe that the Earth is flat and you think the world is round. It created exactly that. It became like, because I think different, does that know my intellectual capacity or the fact that I can think different things than you? That was the intent behind it. Do your own research, don't come at me and ask me. At the end of the day, you're going to feel and believe the way you wasn't to feel. But don't knock my life over that. When I do something, I know my intent. And it proved what I thought it would.

I still don't get your intent! Were you trolling us? Do you want us to have the open conversation? All I want to know is: do you or do you not believe that the Earth is flat? Because it's important to me that you and all of the kids out there know that it indeed is round. 

This has Danny Ainge written all over it. He wasn't having that type of attention on the Celtics. They have more important things to worry about than daily spars with the media. Lets just bury this once and for all. 

But now, Kyrie is back on the 'Earth is flat' bandwagon. Just the other day he went onto Geno Auriemma's, podcast and had this to say: 

When I started actually doing research on my own and figuring out that there is no real picture of the Earth, not one real picture of the Earth, and we haven't been back to the moon since 1961 or 1969, it become like conspiracy, too.

 I'm about to do Kyrie a huge solid. Just sit back and relax, Kyrie. I'll do all the research for you. 

Bam! Straight from NASA. This is a picture from a real spaceship. From real outer space. Of the real, round Earth.

But on second thought, that picture doesn't really show the Earth in 3D. It looks 2D. And flat. Wait...is the Earth flat? Ugh. I'm going to have to do some research and form my own opinion. Damnit, Kyrie.

Hopefully this is the end of this flat Earth nonsense. Lets focus on some hoops. Go Celtics!

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Photo 1: Flat Earth Society
Photo 2: NASA