Richard Jefferson was not going to let Kyrie Irvin’s flat Earth comments go without one more joke, donning a special championship shirt.
The biggest takeaway from the NBA All-Star Weekend was not the Dunk Contest. It was not the 3-Point Contest. Or the Rising Stars Game. It certainly was not the actual All-Star Game.
It was not even the blockbuster DeMarcus Cousins trade.
No, the big takeaway from the NBA’s All-Star Weekend was Kyrie Irving’s apparent belief the Earth is flat. You know that little universal fact every grade schooler learns (well, apparently almost every grade schooler) that the Earth is round was suddenly the hot topic of debate.
The comment originated when Irving joined a podcast with his teammate Richard Jefferson and then went viral during All-Star Weekend when Irving did not back off the claim.
Jefferson is pretty well known for being one of the jokers in the Cleveland Cavaliers locker room and was not about to let Irving off the hook. After practice Wednesday, Jefferson was caught rocking a “Flat World Champions” t-shirt:
https://twitter.com/SInow/status/834529730078638080
That is some A-plus tweaking of his teammate Irving. Especially since the Cleveland Cavaliers are indeed the current champions of this flat Earth we all glide through the cosmos on.
Jefferson is a master at tweaking his teammates in playful ways. He has a very lively SnapChat account that shows some of his interactions with his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates. Jefferson is also pretty notorious for pranking his teammates, as this post from SBNation a few years ago shows.
So this is all par for the course.
Irving, on the other hand? I am sure he is clamoring to get his hands on one of these t-shirts to keep this joke(?) going. At least everyone has to hope it is an elaborate commentary on what we as a society accept as fact blindly. If it is Irving is playing it really well.
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If it is not? Well, NASA has some new round exoplanets to show Irving and the rest of the world to convince him otherwise.