Windy’s Blustery on Kyrie
2012-12-16
Zorro!
Brian Windhorst wrote a short piece on Kyrie Irving’s fantastic night at the Garden. He’s definitely right on a few accounts- Kyrie’s the best guard to enter the league since Derrick Rose, and he almost certainly will be a top-10 player in the NBA very soon. But he paints an overall grim picture of Kyrie’s career arc with his skepticism towards his injury history. His main point is that you can only have so many freak injuries before a pattern emerges. While I see the logic behind such a statement, it really doesn’t seem fair, especially in reaction to the fractured jaw suffered against the Bucks. It came off a hard foul from Luc Mbah a Moute, and these types of injuries are called “freak” for a reason. I don’t think we have any real reason to be worried about Kyrie Irving’s injury history. It’s not like he has Stephen Curry ankles, or Greg Oden knees. But please, Uncle Drew: never slap a wall again.
I agree with s87twist, Since Kyrie’s been back, he’s been doing a lot of Kobe things. Accepting the challenge of guarding Kobe was all sorts of brave. he knows people dont think he’s very good defensively, but then its Kobe. He will torch you anytime he wants. Then shooting right in people’s faces. That first clutch three he made yesterday, JKidd was all over him. It almost as if while he was sitting for 3 weeks he realized that nobody can legitimately stop him all the time.he’s using his very own spin move around defenders so well and effectively now.… Read more »
Well, I guess according to your recent logic, Dani, we ought to be trading him high while we can, eh?
Didn’t miss a game with this latest injury, so I don’t see a problem there.
Kyrie’s ball handling is the best in the league on the fly. I don’t know that there needs to be a superlative for best ball handling while not doing much. When the cavs drafted Kyrie it seemed like people just didn’t know anything about him. It wasn’t that they underestimated him out of disrespect (or Windhorst had told them all “this guy’s going to get injured in three different random spots within two years…calling it,”), it was just that we had an 11 game resume in competitive basketball beyond high school. I we can agree he’s been a surprise to… Read more »
He’s averaging 24 points per game in 35 minutes per game at age 20. Pretty sure i’ve said this before, but that’s the highest scoring rate of any 20 year old EVER. I’d say his ceiling is higher than 27 ppg.
I agree Issac. Iverson was amazing, but he was also one of the least efficient “stars” of all-time and that is rarely brought up. He was also a team cancer and has been blacklisted as if he had communist sympathies. When the Cavs drafted Kyrie the national media kind of set his ceiling as as a better Mike Conley. They brought up that he wasn’t the distributor that Rondo, Williams or Paul are. They campaigned that he didn’t have Rose, Westbrook or Wall’s freakish athleticism. I saw Kyrie as the most balanced of all of them and his efficiency was… Read more »
Thanks, Carter!
This is a really clever title. Just for the record.
Seriously. Kyrie is an absolute baller, and more importantly he’s efficient while he’s doing it. I’ve never been a fan of guards who can put up a lot of points shooting below the league average. Kyrie hits all my buttons.
Thanks for the reminder, Richard. I’m quite the ditz sometimes.
Derrick Rose debuted at age 20 and took until his third season to exceed the PER Kyrie put up last year or this year.
Injuries aside, Kyrie is the best point guard to debut since at least Chris Paul.
http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/52585/kyrie-irvings-41-points-of-might