Kyrie Irving may have pretended to be a flat-earther to get attention

Kyrie Irving revealed that his flat-earth remarks were the first steps he took towards getting out of LeBron James’ shadow.

Kyrie Irving has been at the center of basketball Twitter discussions for the past few months. Whether it’s memes surrounding his flat-earth comments, his trade request to how he’ll fit on the Boston Celtics, it’s hard to find a more talked-about player than him.

But as soon as he came to Boston, he was asked about his stance as a flat-earther. It would make sense, since the major publication there is called the Boston Globe, and they don’t want any trouble with him.

If you remember, the initial comments came from Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye’s podcast, and it has spread like wildfire ever since. Players like Draymond Green and Shaquille O’Neal even came to his defense — although Shaq came out and said his comments were a joke. But perhaps that was all by design, since Irving revealed he didn’t just become sick of LeBron during the offseason:

So what’s the best way to fix that? Come up with a controversy. Say something radical that everyone starts talking about you, but not too bad that it becomes a PR nightmare. From there, Kyrie Irving flat-earther was born:

In a way, it worked. He became a trending topic on Twitter like he wanted to, but it also backfired. Because no matter how many great displays he puts in, he’ll constantly be a subject of ridicule over his remarks. And just because he came clean about it, that doesn’t mean the memes will stop. They’re too good for people to just throw them away.

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You have to wonder why Kyrie waited until he became a Boston Celtic to reveal all of this. Did he deliberately create a divide in the Cavs locker room with these comments? If so, the seeds for his trade request were planted a lot sooner than we all thought.