Understanding the Kyrie Irving decision

Last year I was on a mock trial team for my law school. I was one of two first-year students, and we had two more third-year students. One of the third-year students had been in the marines for a decade, already competed on two other trial teams, and had worked in some of the top firms in Philadelphia. She was clearly the Alpha, and our team revolved around her. We went with her theories, the coaches always used her as the model example for everything, and our team lived and died through her.
The team did awesome, we finished third in the country, and she was probably the biggest reason why. That didn’t stop me and some of my teammates from feeling under-utilized. We accomplished something that our school had never done, but there was still a part of us that wished we had a bigger role. Does that make us selfish?
Insert Kyrie Irving. The Cavaliers superstar guard has requested a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers.Three straight finals, easily the best team in the East, and yet Irving isn’t happy, why?
Despite the popular theory that maybe his priority isn’t winning, I believe the thinking is much more nuanced. Irving is an amazing basketball player, that’s not a debate. But he’s 25 and he still hasn’t built his legacy the way most great players get to do before they go on to look for winning situations. That’s important. In Cleveland, Irving is getting a limit put on how much he can blossom before he’s fully developed as a player. For those of you scurring onto basketball-reference and looking at his usage rate and shot attempts, stop. Blossoming doesn’t just mean taking shots, it means getting a chance to be the leader. Being the guy the coach goes to when they go over stratedgy, the guy who is the pulse of the team, the guy who teammates rely on when things get tight, on and off the court. Irving was always going to be the really talented little brother as long as Lebron James was on the roster. Not just because of James himself, but what having James means for the team. The Cavaliers are one of the oldest teams in the league, and a big part of that is because James has put pressure on the organization to attain win-now players. Hey, the plan worked, they won a title and have been moonwalking to the finals since James returned. But specifically from Irving’s POV, he’s on a team where he’s surrounded by a bunch of older guys that will most likley never view him as an alpha. That’s a tough spot for a kid who’s already feeling like he can do so much more. It’s hard to not look around and ask himself when his time in Cleveland will ever come, and specifically, what type of team will even be left behind once Lebron leaves?
Irving may have chosen a peculiar time to officially voice his fatal grievance, but this was not just a selfish attempt to be “the man.” It’s a young man looking for an opportunity to test the limits of his game.
