Inside Kyrie Irving's 'Calm And Relaxed' Approach To The Game
Throughout Kyrie Irving's 12-year NBA career, he's been known as a box-office performer. His flashy and crafty moves to get the ball into the basket leave fans in attendance and at home in awe. Beyond that hardwood niche to the public eye, he's continuing to grow as a player and fine-tuning his approach to the game.
To the Nets' superstar guard, his approach to the game has been a gradual growth. An approach he's consistently modified from studying the greats before him.
"He approaches it like it's a minute into the game," Kevin Durant told reporters after Brooklyn's road victory over the New Orleans Pelicans Friday night. "That's how calm and relaxed he is. Even though the stakes are different at the beginning of the game and the end of the game, I still believe that he's the same regardless of what the time is on the clock. He plays the way, calm and cool, under control and under pressure in tight moments. It feels like a walk in the park for him.
"The great ones understand that each possession is important and if you stay even keeled throughout the whole game, you're usually in solid shape in the fourth."
There's no secret the NBA's best have off-nights. On the other end, it's how the stars respond and gut through the tough outings or starts. At the Smoothie King Center, it was one of those nights for the Nets guard.
Irving, whose 30-foot 3-pointer put Brooklyn up 106-100 with 43.7 seconds left in the fourth quarter in Friday night's win, shrugged off a cold shooting performance. The Nets (26-13) superstar had trouble buying a basket in Brooklyn's struggle-filled first half. On a night Irving shot 7-of-22 from the field (3-of-10 from 3-Point territory), a triple in the final minute was drained when Brooklyn needed it most.
"Studying the greats and striving to be greater than them," Irving said on his approach postgame. "You look at some of the great representatives of professional sports across the balance of people, most of the time you see that there's a similarity. There's a commonality between the way they control emotions at the end of the game.
"I've been able to learn that over time, but I think the greatest thing I've been able to learn this year is being with the guys, discipline, going through a lot of things externally or internally and us just figuring it out."
Since head coach Jacque Vaughn took the Nets head chair in November, he has held his players accountable. Through that gritty mentality, he has displayed trust in his guys throughout contests. That was on full display with his superstar guard on Friday night.
It was visibly clear that Vaughn held trust in Irving, who entered the fourth quarter with only nine points and a cold shooting slump on his shoulders, to put the ball in the basket with hopes of gutting out the team's 13th road win of the season. The head coach didn't think twice, and the efforts in the final minute not only showed Vaughn's trust in Irving but his star teammate's trust as well.
"He just has a way of embracing that moment no matter what happened previously," Vaughn said postgame. "And for Kevin [Durant] to kick that ball out to him, and Kevin kinda had an iso at the elbow, shows how they've grown together. But [Kyrie Irving] has an unbelievable ability to erase what happened before, and be in the moment and take full advantage of that moment and shine."
