Kevin Durant continues to back Kyrie Irving: ‘The truth, sometimes, can hurt a lot of people’

Kyrie Irving received a lot of criticism leading up to the NBA’s restart in Florida. The Brooklyn Nets guard introduced the idea of players opting-out of the bubble and more than a few opposed him.

But this isn’t the first time Irving has received backlash for speaking his mind, and it certainly won’t be the last.

And much like his Brooklyn Nets teammates defended him throughout the latest batch of criticism, Irving will have those who back him again when necessary — which will include Kevin Durant.

Since they joined forces in Brooklyn, Durant has made clear he’s comfortable with Irving being himself. The superstar forward echoed that sentiment again on Elite Media Group’s RNC Radio podcast:

The truth, sometimes, can hurt a lot of people. When you tell the raw truth, especially in this society, it’s frowned upon. And Kyrie just tells it how it is. There’s no sugar-coating it. If he walks into the gym one day and says, ‘I don’t like how this is going,’ it’s probably not going well. But he just doesn’t mind voicing it.

But, in this situation with the NBPA, he wasn’t the only one who had a problem with what was potentially going to happen in the bubble. Everybody had concerns. But, obviously, he’s Kyrie, the biggest one. That’s going to sell papers at this time, especially during the pandemic, nobody [is] making money. So if you have an opportunity to get some clicks, it’s easy to use Kyrie. But there’s 80, 90 players who had the same questions he had.

Not only will Durant continue to back his teammate, but Irving also told his fellow Brooklyn superstar that he won’t back down:

[Irving] says it all the time, he’s not going to let the system or whatever this is, make him conform to something he’s not on a day-to-day. Whether it’s as a basketball player — trying to tell him how to play — as a person — try to tell him how to speak or what to think about. For anything involving basketball, he’s going to have his own thoughts and opinions. It’s really on everybody else to just kinda let him be who he is. He’s not bothering anybody or getting in trouble. He is who he is.