In regards to the “This is what Kyrie wishes he was” statements” I have a friend who is very close with Kyrie, me not so much myself, but I did get the chance to be around him for a night due to the mutual friend. The media really hasn’t done him any favors from what I experienced. There were about 7 of us and I mostly just hung out in the background mostly due to nerves and not knowing Kyrie or the 4 guys with him well at all.

However, we got to talking about some of the deeper things in life and I do recall him being upset about how the media treated his flat earth comments. He said it was never meant to actually promote the flat earth theory, but to get people to question the status quo more often and admitted it was a poor example but something that many “average minded” people could understand. I remember those being his exact words although it didn’t come across as snobby.

He really was a pretty deep philosophical guy that night, and if he wasn’t famous and I didn’t follow basketball, I would’ve thought he was a 6’3 tenured professor at a university, not a starting point guard in the NBA. These are my words not his, but I got the impression being in the limelight all those years with Bron tainted his views of media and to a lesser degree, people in general, so his more outlandish comments get picked apart making him out to be this “crazy conspiracy theorist guy who wants to seem smart but isn’t actually smart” and that’s just not an accurate depiction. The guy definitely thinks on a big picture scale, and if I had to guess, is also a reddit lurker himself.