NBA Season Preview 2022-23: 5 players with the most to prove this season

3. Kyrie Irving — Brooklyn Nets

Kyrie has a lot to prove this season because he’s playing for his next job. This is a contract year, the result of having to opt in to the final year of his current contract after he could not find his way to the Lakers this offseason.

Kyrie is out to prove that his team can count on him. In three seasons with the Nets, he has played in 103 regular season games out of 226 possible. Going back to his days in Boston, his antics have been a distraction of the worst variety. The Celtics, the very team that Kyrie previously spurned and ravaged, swept the Nets right out of the first round of last year’s playoffs. The Nets were the only team to get swept, gone fishin’ faster than you can say “play-in champions.”

Kyrie played three seasons with LeBron in Cleveland, and the Cavs won 10 playoff series during that run. In his other eight seasons in the NBA, Kyrie’s teams have won four playoff series in all, and he was actually active for only two of them. (Celtics-Pacers first round 2019 and Nets-Celtics first round 2021.)

Depending on how this season goes in Brooklyn, perhaps Kyrie and LeBron will become teammates once again.