Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving doesn't seem to want any part of the NBA's plan to resume the 2019-20 season in Florida next month.
Reports surfaced last week that Irving was a "driving force" in raising concerns over the league's 22-team return plan.
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One concern for players involving the return of the season is that playing basketball again would take attention away from systemic racism and police brutality. Over the last few weeks, many players have taken part in peaceful protests and led the call for change after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis late last month.
Irving reportedly was a prominent voice on a conference call featuring many players over the weekend. The Nets guard even brought up the idea of creating a new league in a different discussion with teammates, according to Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News.
Finally, and most pressing, there’s the social unrest gripping the country, specifically pertaining to this country’s marginalization of African-Americans. Kyrie Irving’s push to skip the bubble has spawned a debate over whether NBA players could effectively influence social reform while playing, or whether they’d have to boycott to force meaningful change. Irving not only led a discussion with close to 100 union members in a conference call, he also urged Nets players to skip the bubble recently in a separate group chat, the Daily News has learned. In that chat, Irving proposed that players could start their own league, according to a source.
A new league? Irving has said a lot of weird things, and this proposal certainly ranks among those.
Bondy provided more clarification on Irving's comments with this tweet late Tuesday night.
There are valid reasons for players not to participate in the season restart. Players who make the decision not to go must inform their team by June 24, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.
The league reportedly is expected to start training camps on July 9. The first seeding games would begin July 30, with the playoffs starting Aug. 17, per reports.
