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Iman Shumpert knows full well what it’s like to play in New York, having played for the last Knicks team to make the playoffs. During that time, Carmelo Anthony was the man running the show at Madison Square Garden.
Since the Knicks’ last postseason trip in 2012-13, Shumpert has played alongside quite a few talented players. During that time, the former Brooklyn Nets guard managed to find a player who reminded him of Anthony: his former Cleveland Cavaliers teammates turned Nets point guard Kyrie Irving.
Specifically, Irving’s leadership style reminds Shumpert of Anthony’s.
“They may forget to be vocal at times. That [is] just not them,” Shumpert said on Complex Sports’ Load Management podcast. “That’s like having — it’s hard to do it this way because they feel disrespected if you say ‘dad.’ But, how you have a dad on this end, they’re both great dads, they both want their kids in school, they both got all the same setup of rules it’s just that this dad lets his kid curse and this dad has got his kid super obedient, he never talks back. He teach[es] him how to do x, y and z because that’s something that went [on in] his life. He felt like this save him one day, os my son gotta know this. It’s one of them things with Kyrie where it’s like, I don’t know how y’all need to be led, but this is how I know how to do it. Kyrie’s not gonna say, ‘What’re y’all doing? Like, move the ball. We’re not moving the ball side-to-side.’ What Kyrie’s gonna do is he’s gonna ask for a step-up screen, drive it and then drive it down the baseline and change sides of the floor to make sure the defense shifts. But he [is] not gonna talk about. He might say it once [out of] frustration, and he’s not gonna talk about it no more. He’s just gonna do something to alternate it.
“I saw that a lot in Melo where … Melo would talk the blame in the media, shoulder whatever — he didn’t really care what he had to shoulder, he just felt like he shoulder be better. Even though I knew at times we kinda put him in a [expletive] spot. I didn’t really put you in the best spot right here and now in the papers they grilling you Melo. He just stayed in the gym and worked, and when we needed him in big moments it didn’t have to be a conversation. I would never have to come up to Melo and turn it on. … I ain’t gotta say that [expletive] to Kyrie — maybe I have said it to Kyrie a couple times where I felt like he left his cape in the hotel room and I was tired of chasing some guard.”
Then Shumpert got into how Irving handles the media:
“Kyrie feels and he says. The reason I love how Kyrie get down is it’s authentically him. I know that from sometimes it being awkward. Sometimes it be something he said and he didn’t already have the knowledge of it. But, he did it before your very eyes.”
“I always respect a man that’ll fail in front of you and just stand back up and wipe themselves off and keep walking. We all trip, but there are certain people that’s going to trip and then look around and be like, ‘Oh [expletive], did anybody see that? There’s some people that are gonna sit and lay on the floor and just laugh super hard because they uncomfortable. But there’s a grown [expletive] man that’s going to trip, dust himself off, and while you laughing he may just shoot you a mean look but he keep walking. … Ky’s gonna say some [expletive] that may be bugged out until you sit down and talk to him and hear the context of what he’s saying. I know it because that’s my friend.”
But Shumpert doesn’t simply enjoy how Irving handles himself. He also thinks what the star guard does is important.
“I just feel like a lot of people are going to grill people, and I think when they grill people it hushes a lot of guys up. Because everybody’s trying to play this good PR and [get] in good cohoots with anybody. You don’t want to burn any bridges and you want to speak politically correct, but at the end of the day, at some point you gotta look in the mirror and be like, ‘Did I really believe that or am I doing it for a couple of bucks. I just love how Kyrie does it because he’s in a position where he doesn’t have to fear reprecussion. Like, why would e have to fear reprecussion? He [is] one of the best basketball players to do it, so he’s putting the pressure on them now. How do we tolerate him?
“It’s a cool power trip to watch. You watch it with a lot of different guys that can push the envelope and it’s like, this is what we’ve been waiting on, bro.”
Shumpert is still looking to find a new home in the NBA ahead of the 2020-21 season. He last played for the Nets early in the 2019-20 season, signing with Brooklyn after Caris LeVert’s injury and just before Irving hurt his right shoulder.