LeBron: Kyrie Irving is the most skilled player he’s ever seen
That reporter calling LeBron Kyries father will forever change history.
Kyries mother passed away when he was a baby, so he is really really really really really close with his Dad.
Especially considering how the NBA has been a single moms league up until recently with all the nepo aau spawn
Idk why people act like that was the moment that Kyrie decided he wanted to leave, he had decided after the 2016 finals basically, he wasn’t getting the credit and individual awards, he made one all nba team in Cleveland
Kyrie wanted his own team from day one and wanted to prove himself, that comment was nothing, if u actually watch the full clip instead of the shortened version he even smirks after
Kyrie wanted his own team and wanted individual awards, he’s literally said it himself
The reaction was still overblown though, the reporter is a nobody to Kyrie, why would you take such offense?
Because his third eye was opened
Kyrie probably felt like Lebron hijacked his team. The reporter saying that added fuel to the fire
Just because someone is a nobody to a celeb doesn’t mean their words can’t affect them lol
That gave us one of the greatest moments in sports reporting history tbf though.
Cavs medical team screwed him over making him play thru injuries. Everyone is looking for the dramatic answer and not a real one on why he wanted out
Not a controversial take at all. Kyrie has some of the best handles and craftiest finishes around the rim. His English on layups is filthy
His shooting is pretty underrated. People always think about Kyrie as the dribble/layup guy but I personally think his mid range game and instant pull up threes define his game way more
His offensive game is insane it’s the fact as a PG Kyrie has a post game like literally he can post up and turn over either shoulder. I think people miss that, he’s not just a layup guy and he doesn’t only shoot threes. He is legitimately a 3 level scorer and can score anyway you want.
Well said. Not trying to compare him to someone like Harden, but Harden was incredible at step back 3’s and then if they guarded that he was also super efficient with floaters (and obviously an incredible passer). But with Harden, it was just two unstoppable moves in his prime. Kyrie has so many types of ways to score it’s crazy and they are all so difficult to pull off.
The creativity of mastering them all plus being able to pull any number of moves on someone is what makes him truly unique. I don’t see near as many younger players trying to add some of these types of moves. It’s like younger guys are now all in AAU or something rather than playing street ball back in the day working on crossover. Almost like creative moves aren’t efficient enough and the new mentality is only to perfect certain moves and thats it.
Prime Harden has a lot of moves around the rim, too. He was great at getting downhill and creating contact to get a whistle while making the shot pretty often.
As he got older and the injuries piled up, he started going to the floater game to keep himself healthier.
He was never Kyrie at the rim, but Rockets Harden could score anywhere on the court, not just the 3s and floaters he uses much more now.
Yeah his finishes are fantastic but his midrange game is so refined. Especially nice seeing it in the age of the 3 pointer.
I mean… the defining play of his career was a shot
Still get headaches about that damn shot
I know he’s a good shooter but I associate him with finishes around the rim a lot more. That’s his bread and butter as a player
I agree, but the direct comparison beeing Curry, that’s one skill Kyrie is bested at.
This. Luka said the same thing when asked who the most skilled/best 1v1 player is.
I would say he has the best handles of all time
Yeah his English is incredible. Stuff like “too small” and “you can’t guard me!”
That’s not fair he’s got a bias because he’s kind of like his son.
Kyrie couldn’t handle the emotions of that reveal when the media asked him about it. What a great father and son duo man
someone should ask if Bronny is like a brother to him
Nash and LeBron will call him the most skilled or at least one of the most skilled players to ever play and redditors will call you a moron for the same opinion lmao
You dont have to like the guy to recognize his talent
Easily one of my favorite players to ever watch
Edit: check out u/ashensacrifice comment below for those that doubt lmao
I watched Kyrie live once. Man when you watch him play, you can feel the atmosphere change, all the defenders are watching him, getting ready to help. Everything he did was like poetry in motion.
I swear he never missed that game. Looked up the boxscores, he shot 47% 🤣
A lot of people seem to conflate “skilled player” (which he unquestionably is) and “best player”, so some people think by calling him “the most skilled” they are saying he is better than their favorite player.
Thing is, even if you go off most skilled, there’s vastly more skilled players than Kyrie.
Bird, Magic, Curry, Hakeem, Kobe, Jokic, Jordan ..
The greatest of all time are usually some of the most skilled players ever too.
Curry only can shoot better.. jokic n magic are not more skilled than Kyrie
the thing lebron and many others are trying to convey is that no, those players are not vastly more skilled than kyrie
its just incomprehensible to some people tho
every single one of those players has severe physical advantages over him. that isn’t skill
What are you talking about? This thread is full of people agreeing. There’s always at least one weird strawman comment that totally makes shit up about redditors.
In fairness, Reddit often works in a way where a positive thread summons all the positive and agreeing comments, a negative summons all the negative comments.
I’ve certainly seen this kind of thing for many different discussions.
In this thread, sure. Pre-Dallas, people were just lying about his skills because redditors didn’t like his off the floor antics. The tides have definitely been shifting back in recent years from what I’ve seen on here.
You literally just have to type “kyrie” in the search and you’ll see non stop posts slandering him. They wouldn’t be in this post of LeBron and Nash praising him cause it would highlight their ignorance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/s/cPao3X53sR
Far from made up, look for yourself
If you sort the comments by ‘best’, the top comment calls him overrated lol. It was the first comment I saw
Lmao kid is this your first day on reddit?
It is clearly not your first
He’s one of the best dribblers you will ever see.
He’s a fucking idiot as well.
Here’s literal proof of it happening to me 4 days ago
Lmao thats fucking gold
Insane dude people are just straight sheeps these days
I have a cousin that gets instantly triggered when I mention it. It’s fun to do.
I don’t think it’s about liking him, most people are agreeing, players are more about bag and style of play rather than effectiveness and you get this difference in opinion
Players can be dumb too, so can redditors obviously most are
The thing is we’ve seen many effective players get underrated by players because of no bag
The players are just saying that he has the most amount of dribbling moves and shots off the dribble they have ever seen from a player. It’s the variance and he does it at a pretty high efficiency considering what he tries to pull off in games. It’s not dumb that other players recognize this.
I’m not saying it’s dumb, i’m saying players appreciate bag / looking smooth over effectiveness and impact on winning in team NBA basketball
Ask players who do they think is better, Jamal Crawford or Rudy Gobert impact wise
Most of them will tell you Jamal but it’s by far Gobert and it’s not close but Jamal had an insane handle and looked good while he did it, Gobert protects the rim and has stone hands on offense
I get the point you are making but Jamal Crawford is absolutely more skilled than Gobert… Obviously defense takes skill but the majority of Gobert’s impact comes from being 7”3’, insane length, insane athlete etc. Lebron himself is a great example, undoubtedly extremely skilled but his biggest edge is his size and the fact he is the greatest pure athlete of all time. I would put Kyrie, Nash, Chris Paul, Curry all ahead of him on pure basketball skills (handle, shooting, passing, finishing etc)
There’s nothing wrong with appreciating players who have a bag. A lot of other ways you can impact the game in basketball is heavily decided by your height/wingspan/athleticism.
But what a player can do with the basketball in their hand is much more determined by skill and creativity that just about anyone can emulate and that makes a lot more people appreciate them.
players are more about bag and style of play rather than effectiveness and you get this difference in opinion
Yeah this is the big thing.
Kyrie had a season where he literally shot better everywhere on the court than Lillard, but Lillard still came out as being more efficient because of his shot selection and ability to draw fouls.
The things he can do are incredible. He just never tidied up his game the way other guards usually will. For example, one of the best things Harden ever did was simplify his bag.
I had a great tennis coach who used to say something like “good players can hit all kinds of shots, but great players are consistently hitting the same shots”.
It’s not about being the best poker player, it’s about rigging the deck so you always have the best hand.
Almost nobody denies that he’s one of the most talented players ever. Like, yes, he’s amazing with the ball.
Doesn’t mean he’s some legendary ATG and a pioneer
He’s an all time great to actual nba players and their opinions mean more than any of the mouth breathers in here that can’t even dribble without looking at the ball 🤣🤣
He mostly gets hate because in every Kyrie thread if you scroll down far enough somebody says he’s better than Steph
KD and Kyrie are like your favorite players favorite players
A lot of the under 25 players say Paul George. Some specify his fluidity.
Some even say he’s the GOAT…
And Kobe.
Nah Kobe is the work ethic
Some of y’all might be too young, but Kobe held the most skilled title for over a decade until maybe the last 5 years or so. He was also the incoming rookie class favorite player from 2007 to about 2012⁄2013. OP mentioned Kd/Kyrie. Both of those guys will not hesitate to tell you that Kobe was their favorite player growing up.
I forgot this an Anti Kobe sub. You will get downvoted in here even if everything youre saying is an easily researchable objective fact.
True (my favorite player is KD)
Prime Kyrie had the greatest handle of all time. There really aren’t a ton of players who were even close. All time PG rim finisher, too.
It’s reasonable to doubt how much “being a bucket” impacts winning at the very highest level, but nobody was a bucket like prime Kyrie was a bucket.
Best under the rim finisher in his era, certainly.
IMO D Rose and Curry are the only ones that can even sniff that competition
And even then they weren’t putting English on the ball like Kyrie
Take me back to the 2015-2016 Curry/Kyrie finishing debate haha.
IIRC they had very similar %s. It came down to Kyrie’s acrobat/flashier finish vs Curry’s efficient numbers. Peak eye test vs stat watching lol.
He still does… having the best handle doesn’t go away 😂
theres simply nothing he cant do on the court offensively i think. Except those freakish luka jokic bron passes, but even then i dont think hes lacking as a faciltator.
I agree and I always kinda think Kyrie underachieved a bit in his career
Like the dude is objectively a great player in every offensive category, maybe only a good passer I guess
He’s one of the best 3 point shooters ever, is probably the best PG finisher ever, best handles ever, great mid range. Yet the guy never made a all nba first team and only made 2nd team once
It’s just crazy to me that a guy is so perfect on offense yet is still objectively best as the robin of a team.
Kyrie didn’t underachieve, he just played in literally the greatest guard era in league history.
Westbrook only has 2 first teams. Curry only has 4. Dame only has 1. Harden is the leader of the pack with 6 which still isn’t necessarily insanely high.
For harden to get 6 in an era with these monsters is insane tho
He was a volume monster and more importantly he rarely missed games. Arguably the availability goat of the late 2010s, he could choke a bit but he would always be here and try.
bron more available
Dude that was my same reaction when I just looked it up. I had no clue he had 6, I just knew the other names didn’t have a lot.
It definitely favours the triple double high scoring guards like harden and luka
Tbf I don’t think anyone seriously believe harden is worse than dame, Westbrook, or Chris Paul during his 1st team stretch
Wall and CP3 that time too. Fought for my life that Wall > Kyrie because Wall was a better defender haha
Yeah, I think Wall is the guy who suffers the most in this. He’s probably a 3 or 4 time All-NBA player in a different era like Mark Price.
Healthy Wall was always better than Kyrie even without the defense.
For someone with Kyrie’s all time talent never making 1st team all NBA feels like an underachievment
You have to put All-NBA into the context of what the competition was (at least back when it wasn’t positionless).
It’s similar to Melo never making first team All-NBA. He didn’t make it because his best season where he came in 3rd for MVP, 1 and 2 were Lebron and KD and took both spots. And it’s even worse for centers like Ewing who were fighting for 1 spot.
He just doesn’t do enough for his teammates to be a Batman on a contender. His passing instincts are bad (although his passing skills are good or great) and he doesn’t create a ton of gravity with the ball because he scores on his defender rather than beating him.
A very simple and reductive answer would be injuries.
It’s not injuries, he sucked as a first option in Boston he was healthy that playoffs and shot 30% from the field straight face vs the Bucks
Injuries are definitely the reason he doesn’t have more All-NBA appearances. He’d probably have 5-6 if he was healthy the whole year.
1 season, he was literally on track to be 2nd team at absolute worst in his 1st season with Boston lol, was literally in the MVP race
that did screw him over in brooklyn but even there, he was a robin to KD. he’s just not cut out to be a first option
He’s only underachieved if you ever believed he was a “generational” point guard to begin with. Flashy offense isn’t everything. His impact on winning wasn’t all that. He’s not in the same tier as the top point guards of his generation and is arguably at the bottom of the next tier.
Also injured all the time.
Yeah I watched Kyrie through the years but couldn’t really articulate why he wasn’t going to be a generational player.
Some of it was obvious: the injuries, the assisting, the defense,… I don’t know it was storyline or just bias, but he did always seem like the ideal Robin rather than the Batman.
What are we considering to be the standard for over/underachieving. He was the 2nd best player on a championship team. If he wasn’t in his own head on the Celtics he probably would have ended up being the best player on a championship team with Tatum and Jalen.
Lots of great players don’t win rings. Even Allen Iverson (a superior finisher though not technically a PG) didn’t win a ring. And Kyrie wasn’t as good defensively as AI. And as great as Kyrie was he was never the best point guard in the league. Are there any years he was “robbed” of first team.
There’s a version of history where he probably has more accolades but it’s hard to say this timeline would be considered underachieving.
Steph, Dame, Nash
From what I can tell, it’s his tendency to prefer shooting or getting to the rim above playmaking.
Don’t get me wrong he has the skills to be an all time playmaker and he does shows that often.
But it seems to me he chooses the scoring path more often enough that it holds his teams back in the long term.
Again, I’m not saying he’s bad playmaker, I’m saying if he balanced his play selection just but more towards playmaking, he would be a better first option player even though it’d hurt his stats about.
I also think it would have kept him on the floor longer with less injuries.
He’s a little bit too undersized to be a durable scoring first guard.
Not to say that there aren’t other smaller score first guards, but they usually balance that by being more frequent long range shooters to offset wear from getting to the rim. (ex Curry - he obviously drives to the rim, but i think he takes a bit more of balanced approach than Kyrie)
Basically I’m saying his skills allow him to succeed as score first guard who gets to the rim despite his physical limitations, but if he had went with a more balanced guard profile, he would have been an overall more effective player.
I think people just think dribbling and finishing but those aren’t the only skills for basketball.
Passing, specifically vision, timing and knowing where to put the ball is a skill and I’d argue CP3 is up there with Kyrie.
CP3 may not even be 6 feet and was somehow a plus defender while being an unbelievable playmaker and somehow played into his late 30s.
You think Lebron isn’t considering kyrie’s passing or playmaking ability when he evaluates him?
Yeah, because if you’re taking every basketball skill into account Curry, and CP3 are head and shoulders more skilled. I just disagree with their definition of skilled
I definitely dont think he’s talking about defense at least
I think it’s a casual podcast and if they had been talking about Curry or CP3 Bron probably would have said similar things. No reason to add negative nitpicks that get overblown into controversy because social media and sports “journalist” hacks hang onto every syllable that come out of these guys mouths.
I think there’s very few guys that do things that LeBron thinks he couldn’t do so I think he’d be less impressed with passing and vision and put more weight into dribbling and fancy footwork
CP3 might be the best playmaking classic pg of his era.
If you haven’t seen Kyrie live and you live in an NBA city I’d advise you to try to catch him before he retires. It’s fucking beauty watching him with the ball. And go early and watch the warm ups, his dribbling drills are insane.
I wish he’d make some of those 80’s Pete Marivich/ Red Auerbach type videos.
What do these guys even know about basketball?
Personally I’d have Steph over Kyrie but I think there’s an argument for a few different guys.
Kyrie is the sickest baller that ever balled out
His handles is pure magic
Don’t look at my flair but I agree and I’m not bias at all.
Watching Kyrie play is like watching the best dancer you’ve ever seen, he artful af with the ball
These guys clearly don’t know basketball. Most skilled? Everyone on Reddit and TikTok will tell you Kyrie just dribbles good. /s
LeBron come to Dallas and play with him and Coop and bring the Don with you
Steph
Bronny crying in a corner
Kyrie has the best handles but Steph is more skilled imo
Handles and finishing are not the ONLY skill.
I’ve posted before that had any other player in the history of the game hit that left-handed floater/throw over Jokic to win the game I’d have considered it pure luck. But with Kyrie I can sort of see it.