Kyrie Irving had to be held accountable

This is the Adam Gold Show. They're seven, two, and one. Yeah. And they played seven of their ten games away from home.

Yeah, there's also that. They actually haven't had a true homestand yet. This will be the first time they play back-to-back home games all season. All year. Tonight against Buffalo, Sunday afternoon against Toronto.

This one on ESPN Plus and Hulu. Sunday on the mothership. Ah, well, the curse continues tonight. Oh, no, they broke the curse last year. No, no, no. They broke the curse last year.

No, curses exist forever. Just ask NCC fans. Oh, okay. Fair.

Oh, that's fair. Yeah. But they just haven't really put together a string of really good games, but they were excellent, I thought, last night.

Yeah. I think we look back last year because they started with 9-0. They did. 9-0-1, I think, in the first ten. I thought they came out looking excellent to start last season.

Then they tapered off at different moments last year. I think it's actually good that they're not playing their best and they're still banking points because hopefully they could just continue to progress. Especially, like Luke Tkok said earlier, guys like Stazny and Burns continue to find their way in Rod's system and continue to elevate their play. Yes, it's tough for Stazny because it's a system he's not used to, right? But it's also about speed and forechecking, and I don't think that's necessarily been his game. Let's remember that Paul Stazny would not have come here if Max Patchy ready did not get hurt.

Yeah. That was the signing to make up for the absence of Max Patchy ready initially. They tried him on a third line playing a wing.

That wasn't working. They moved him to the middle. The fourth line, by the way, continues to be very good. Derek Stepan has been good. Stefan Nason has been good. So that's been a very effective line. At some point, we're going to see Jack Drury here.

I'm convinced of it. We will see him here this year, and I think when we do see him, it'll probably be because of injury, but if Drury comes up, my sense is that Drury will stay up. I think they are waiting for that moment to happen, and it might be Paul Stazny's spot in the lineup or Derek Stepan's or Stefan Nason's that ultimately gets taken.

With all of that said, there's still another level for them to go to, and it comes in two areas. One, it comes when Taravainen and Jarvis and a couple of other players get their offensive games going, and it comes when the goaltending gets better. Goal tending has just been mediocre so far this year, and the numbers say it's been mediocre so far this year, although goals are up all over the league. Sabres are averaging almost four and a half goals a game. Small sample size, but 43 goals in 10 games? Seems like a lot of goals to me.

Seems like a lot of goals. Should be a fun night at PNC Arena tonight. Shall we do a wall of sound?

The wall of sound is a function of this studio. There's no doubt about it. Oh, this week they were going on with the Philadelphia Eagles. Could they be undefeated? Could they go undefeated this year? Folks, at the time they were 7-0. It's a 17 game season. Yeah, 9 and a half way there. They're still not half way there. I know. They are 8 and 0 now.

They still have 9 games left to play. If they get to 11 or 12, okay. Yay. Maybe 12. I'll give you that. 12.

More than a month after that. True. My gosh, Nick Sirianni is the head coach of the Eagles, and he's thrilled to be 8-0. Yeah, it's just the next one. You know, at this particular point, being 8-0 sweet, right? And, you know, it'd be the alternative of being 7-1 or 6-2, right? And so, we know that our goal wasn't to go 8-0. Our goal is to take one game at a time. And that's our goal.

And so, is it good? Is it good to be able to have this long weekend and sit at 8-0? Of course, but we know that we're going to get back to work on Monday and go attack this next game against Washington like we attacked this last game against Houston. There you go. That is so football, Coachy.

I appreciate it. Very football-y. Win the day.

From Nick Sirianni. It was everything but win the day. We're just going to try to go 1-0 this week. That's what they're going to try and do.

No, you got to go 1-0 today. You can't get much for $5 these days, unless you go to Wendy's for a $5 Biggie Bag. Get your choice of Double Stack, Junior Bacon Cheeseburger, or Crispy Chicken BLT. Plus, four-piece nugs, fries, and a drink.

All for just $5. You got that bag. You got that Biggie Bag. You got that bag.

That was smooth, wasn't it? That's how you're going to feel when you get that Biggie Bag at Wendy's. U.S. price and participation may vary. Includes four-piece nuggets, small soft drink, and small fry.

Prices may be higher in Alaska and Hawaii. I think the Eagles are really good, though. I absolutely do.

One thing I don't know... I mean, their schedule is kind of soft the rest of the way. But I think that about a lot of schedules, because there's only so many teams that are good. And how many teams are really good? Are there 10 really good teams in the NFL? No.

I mean, it's close. Philly, Dallas, San Francisco, Minnesota. And to varying degrees, I think Minnesota's kind of a house of cards, but that's four in the NFC. Nobody in the NFC South is good. No.

Right? We can agree on that, right? Washington's no good. Most of the NFC West, which we thought would be Seattle good, or does Seattle have a good record? Let's just say they're good.

That's five. Okay. We're going to have seven playoff teams in the NFC.

Okay. We know the Packers aren't, the Bears aren't, the Lions aren't. Right? Nobody... Somebody's going to win the NFC South.

By default. Right. That's six. Somebody's making... A bad team's going to make the playoffs in the NFC. Bad team. In the AFC. Bills. Chiefs. Titans. Ravens. Even Ravens are iffy. Dolphins. I excluded the Giants, by the way, from the NFC. So maybe that's the seven team.

I don't know. I'm not sure the Giants are really good, but they have a good record. I mean, can't deny the record. And they're well coached. We understand that. We don't have that many good teams.

That's the fact. So I think everybody's got a soft schedule. Here's what the Eagles have left, though. They're in, they're at home against the Commandos. Then they're at the Colts. Home against the Packers.

I mean, who knows what Green Bay's that like in three weeks. Home against the Titans. That's a good game. At the Giants. That's a good game. At the Bears.

Not so much. At the Cowboys. Home against the Saints.

Home against the Giants. I mean, there are three games on that schedule. Two of which, well, one of which they'll definitely be underdogs. They'll be underdogs in Dallas. They'll probably be favored in all of their remaining games, albeit maybe a field goal at the Giants. Everything else is probably closer to a touchdown. So, uh, kind of seems kind of silly to be talking about going undefeated. I talked way too much about the Philadelphia Eagles going undefeated.

You would talk about it too much after like seven minutes talking about it. You would agree, right? Yeah.

All right. The only thing I want to hear about from Kyrie Irving's situation, because we're going to talk about it with Brendan Whitted in just a few minutes. Stephen A. Smith. Actually, in terms of a basketball sense, thinks there might be a benefit. Kevin DeGrand is going to be on the Brooklyn Nets devoid of superstar teaming.

And that they're going to have to win by committee instead of playing two on five basketball. For all intended purposes, who knows that might end up being the best thing that could have happened to Kevin DeGrand. But I do believe that this is an indictment against him to some degree in this regard. The fact of the matter is he's been conspicuously quiet in this whole ordeal. He's had nothing to say. And it's just a reminder that what Kevin DeGrand wants to do is play basketball and go home.

He doesn't want all of this other stuff. Yeah, then what we just said. I think that statement that Durant made at Shootaround today reflects poorly on Kevin Durant. There are certain elements that you can't just ignore.

I mean, you can, Kevin. Nobody says that you have to comment on it. But the team can't ignore that. Individually, you could do what you want, but the team can't ignore it.

And it's a major problem. And we'll talk about this with Brennan Whitted on the other side. But if somebody wanted to help Kyrie, a player, a teammate, a friend, that player, teammate, friend should tell Kyrie, dude, you're hurting us. You are hurting us.

And if you can't see it, then we can't help you. We'll talk about that with Brendan Whitted next. Brendan Whitted League Pass layer at HU CoSell on Twitter joins us to kind of just peel down this Kyrie Irving stuff.

What is the goal here? I've already talked about this a little bit. And we'll get into what Kyrie had to say in his apology. But Kevin Durant, I'm actually more upset about what Kevin Durant said today at Shootaround because he basically wanted the Nets organization to ignore it so we can just go play basketball. Could the Nets organization have ignored this?

Absolutely. That's not a reasonable thing for them to ask of them, particularly in the market that they're in. Maybe you could have gotten away with a little bit more of this in Oklahoma City when you first got into the league. But not in New York.

You're not going to do that. But honestly, I don't think you could have done it there either just because of the prominence of the player mostly. And so it wasn't reasonable. I think I understood what he was saying that he wished all of this would just go away. That was kind of the larger thing that he was talking about. He clarified later.

He's like, hey, man, this is not me condoning any sort of anti-Jewish sentiment or anything like that. He really does just want to go back to playing ball. And he even talked about the kind of unifying nature of basketball.

You can maybe kind of shrug your shoulders at that. But I think that that's really what he wanted. But it wasn't it's not a reasonable expectation at all. I think from an individual like I didn't need Kevin Durant to say anything. Kevin Durant could have said nothing about this and that mean publicly.

And that would have been fine for me. And again, we're going to peel back and go down the Kyrie Road in a minute. But if we want to help Kyrie, not we, but if the the NBA community wanted to help Kyrie, what do you think is the way the NBA community should have approached this with Kyrie? We say NBA community.

You mean the NBA like, oh, the players. All right. So yes.

All right. Teammates, friends. Yeah. So I don't know if you know, like you mentioned KD. They're going to ask KD, right? Like he's the most prominent member. He's a teammate. He's the reason that Kyrie is there in all likelihood.

Look, they came as a package deal from all the reports. And so he was going to get asked about this 100 percent. I don't know if publicly going in Kyrie is was what if you really if there is if the idea is, hey, you really want to change his mind or maybe educate him properly about the things that he's promoting, because that's what he was doing him fighting back on the pros and things.

But if you really want to see him like learn, like unlearn some stuff and learn like some correct history and stuff like that, they go to him publicly wasn't going to be the way to do it, to do it, because he is he's the stubborn in a way that is that is like it's steadfast. And it's interesting because we and we've had conversations about Kyrie about other stuff. Right. Like I talked about his importance in summer 2020 when he was legitimately like, hey, maybe we shouldn't play basketball anymore. Right. And a lot of that pushback that he that he gave went on to help.

Hey, let's have voting centers and some of these NBA arenas. Let's have a more real relationship with the political factions in these different states like that really did lead to change. But that same steadfast stubbornness in that instance, being able to speak truth to power regardless of whoever else was in his ear is now kind of undermining him in a very ironic way here because then it's well, I said this and it doesn't matter what you say.

I'm going to I'm going to stand on this regardless. And some of that some of those same the catalyst for some of that good change that I'm talking about that happened in 2020 is now kind of is undoing now. And that's I mean, that's usually like what can be your strength and then be your weakness. And that's kind of what we saw here. But yeah, if you really wanted if they if there is a real desire for change, it has to happen probably from his peers. I don't know how much establishment stuff he really is going to listen to particularly that next organization that seems to be in upheaval in some other ways. But it would have to come from people like K.D.

or maybe LeBron. You know, they have a they seem to have had passed up whatever stuff was going on with their relationship earlier on, too. It has to come from behind the scenes. There's there's a pride thing there that that probably didn't serve him well either in this entire thing. You used the word stubborn.

I actually said that about Tyrae before. He's too stubborn to admit that he might have been wrong, but it doesn't even make a difference to me, to me, whether he's right or wrong on the issue. I mean, I may I think he's wrong, but it doesn't matter because he doesn't believe that he's wrong and you're not going to convince him. So the Nets are going to get him counseling and who knows what the NBA is going to demand from him.

And none of that stuff matters. All word salad even coming from the league, because if he doesn't believe he needs it, it won't matter what he does. What he needed to hear, I think from Durant or another peer, maybe I mean, I'm assuming that Kyrie and Durant are friends at some level.

I do think that they are. OK, like I think that there there was has been every opportunity for Kyrie for KD to kind of throw Kyrie on the bus for anyone doing missing. Yeah, missing games last year. You know, it doesn't have to. It didn't even have to be this. He could have easily be like, he should be here. I don't know why he's not here. I got the shot. He needs to get a shot so we can go and win this title.

He could have easily done that at any point last year and just flat out didn't do it. I think they have a real bond and a real connection. Right. So Durant doesn't have to, as you said, Durant doesn't have to say anything publicly, but he has to go to Kyrie and say, dude, you are hurting us. You here helps us accomplish what we wanted to what we want to accomplish.

You being unreliable and not here. And oh, by the way, Kyrie Irving is putting himself above the team again this year hurts the nets. So until somebody gets through to him that way, I don't think he can help anybody, let alone this team. He's a detriment to every locker room he's going to go into, which frankly, he's kind of been in the last two in Boston. That team got worse with him on it better when he left it.

Same thing is happening in Brooklyn. They're not good. They were better before he got there. I mean, Kevin Durant can do what he on the court. Kevin Durant's great unless he's hurt. Kyrie has been more unavailable than injured since he got to Brooklyn. Somebody's got to get through to him that way. Am I crazy? No, I mean, not at all.

I mean, look, when it comes to this, this is obviously bigger than basketball. And I want him there's no way I can know because I don't know him personally, whether or not the things that he promoted were things that he believes or if he was like, it's just miss educated on some things. And that's something that now that we've gotten the apology and he's come out with the apology. Now we'll see in the way that he kind of carries himself moving forward. In the last like three or four or five years, and maybe this is just me getting older, I've walked back some of my, hey, if you're like this, I think he's 30 or whatever.

This is who you are, right? And one, I'd like to not think that I'm still getting better. But two, I don't know how much about Tim Hardaway that you remember, about five or six years ago, I guess, he has some really antiquated views on homosexuality.

Homosexuality, absolutely. And I think he was in the booth at the time, not at the time they said them, but at the time he was calling games and stuff like that. And so he got removed from those and we hadn't heard back from him in a while. But I've been kind of following the story all along and apparently he's really established and really done a lot of legitimate learning from LGBTQ groups and has changed as a man, as a person. And so I like to think that that's possible. You know what I mean? And I particularly like to think about it for Kyrie because in all honesty, I've liked Kyrie for a long time.

You know what I mean? Like the silly stuff aside, like flat earth stuff, that didn't matter to me. Even him choosing to get the vaccine. Like at some point I had to, again, come to realization because real people in my real life didn't get it. I was like, okay, this is something you're choosing not to protect yourself for.

Right? Like that is a decision ultimately that you're going to have to make and I'm not going to hold that against you nor am I going to say because Kyrie's not getting it. No one else is getting it. If you're taking your medical advice from Kyrie, that's... Joe Rogan.

He's taking it from Joe Rogan. Yeah, yeah. Whatever you want to do. Fine, right? I mean, that's again, that's on you. But this is so... It's too dangerous and it's too real to kind of throw your hands up at because they're like Nazis walking around here in real life. Yeah.

That's a real thing that's popping off right now. There are people with really dangerous extremist, terroristic sources of ideas that are like running for office. And so this is too serious for you just kind of like, ah Kyrie being Kyrie. No, no, no. It's dangerous for folks out here, for minority groups out here.

It's very, very dangerous. And so this isn't one of those things that can be kind of just sat back and well, hopefully Kyrie can be a Kyrie. Hopefully he can learn from this and he's talked about learning and being a learned person. He's got a lot of concern about where he's learning some of these things from. If you're looking at like the Alex Jones post that he put up on his Instagram, like a week ago or whatever.

But like, I'm hoping that he's able to be guided in the right way and put into the right rooms about learning the correct things because the other, like the sub sub part about all of this is that people, not just Kyrie, are having trouble delineating from like fact and misinformation. That's been alternative facts. Yeah. Understand that was the term I was told five years ago, six years ago. They were alternative facts, which I don't believe actually exist.

Brendan Whitted. Here's the thing. A stopped clock is right twice a day. So I'm not going to disparage any of the people who posted what about what at some point we're all right about something. I think at some point we're all wrong about something. I think most of Kyrie's issues, and I would say this about a lot of intolerance.

Most of the issues come out of simply not having any life experiences in that area or simply being, I'm not using the word ignorant in a negative way, just not knowing what's going on in communities that are different from yours. So I think if Kyrie were to really have experienced some of these things, and some he probably has in different ways, then he would have a greater understanding if he had experienced stuff like this. Same for all of those other people.

But I think I'm like you. I want Kyrie to get it because we don't see Kyrie's talent come along all that often. And when that guy is right, and we only have to go back how many years to Cleveland when he was right, that guy is just one of the best players I've ever seen. He's a top 25 all-time NBA talent, and I might be selling him short on that. That's how good he is, but all this other stuff is going to get in his way. Yeah, and we talked before the season about, I was like, well, Kyrie won't miss any more games because he missed the shot. There's no more vaccine. We don't have to worry about any of this stuff.

And my bad, guys, I'm just flat out my bad. I've never seen anybody work harder to play less basketball in my life. And we thought Ben Simmons was going to be the real problem in Brooklyn.

Right. Ben is like, wow, y'all are wildin' over here. I thought it was rough in Philly. Man, it's toxic over here. Yeah, man.

And I'm hoping he gets back healthy because he's hurt again. Yeah, that's a surprise. The whole next thing has to work out. Now, Imea Doku is somehow supposed to ride in on some horse and change the culture because he's not just riding in on a horse.

He's riding away from a fire that he started on the horse. And I'm assuming the reason that they're going with him, the only thing I could think is, one, he was in that organization before, and they have some sort of deals with him. And two, he did get a reputation very early on in Boston. For me, he had to speak to the stars in a stern and real way to be like, hey, this was going to go down right here.

Like, that's it. Like, he did get that rep pretty early on and was even publicly doing it. And then that changed that culture and then they got to the finals. So maybe they look at that and they think, hey, if he's here, he can do the same thing. Plus, I mean, I'm not trying to condone having an affair with somebody, you know, with the wife of somebody in your organization. I'm not trying to condone that.

But at the end of the day, he didn't commit a crime. So, I mean... Yeah. But there's also so much that I still feel like we never... Oh, I'm sure there's stuff we don't know. Yeah. We never understood because there started to become rumors about, you know, whether or not once the relationship ended or did it end on bad terms and then that started to affect, you know, the dealings between him and the woman. Like, it was a whole... Right. There are enough rumors there to where, unless the nets are 100% sure what happened, bringing them into your organization is a bad look because of the women that work in your organization. Like, that would be... You know, that's... I'm... The only thing that I can think is that they feel very confident that they know everything.

I'm not sure that they do, but I guess we'll all find out together, which is insane. It is. Brendan Woodard, I appreciate your time, my friend. Absolutely.

Go Bison. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Men and women's basketball starts next week, so absolutely. Let's go get it. You got it. At hukosel on Twitter.

Thank you very much to Brendan Woodard. This is the Adam Gold Show. Oh, oh, oh, O'Reilly. This is Claudia's O'Reilly Auto Parts story. I had just moved to a new city and barely even knew where the grocery store was yet. When my car wouldn't start one morning, I didn't know who to ask about local shops, but I remembered a name from back home, O'Reilly Auto Parts. I called and they pointed me to a great mechanic just down the street. Now, I feel a little more at home. Oh, oh, oh, O'Reilly Auto Parts.