79 Facts About Kyrie Irving

1.

Kyrie Irving was named the Rookie of the Year after being selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the first overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft.

2.

Kyrie Irving played college basketball for the Duke Blue Devils before joining the Cavaliers in 2011.

3.

Kyrie Irving won the Most Valuable Player award for the 2014 All-Star Game.

4.

Kyrie Irving played as a Celtic for two seasons, after which he signed with the Brooklyn Nets as a free agent in 2019.

5.

Kyrie Irving has played for the United States national team, with which he won gold at the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

6.

Kyrie Irving has written, directed and acted in a number of advertisements as the role of "Uncle Drew", which became a feature film in 2018.

7.

Kyrie Irving has starred as himself in Kickin' It and has done voicework in We Bare Bears and Family Guy.

8.

Kyrie Irving has an older sister, Asia, and a younger sister, London.

9.

Kyrie Irving is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

10.

Kyrie Irving grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, where he frequently attended his father's adult-league games.

11.

Kyrie Irving said that in fifth grade, he was offered a scholarship to Boston University by then-head coach Dennis Wolff.

12.

Kyrie Irving played for Montclair Kimberley Academy in his freshman and sophomore years in high school.

13.

Kyrie Irving averaged 26.5 points, 10.3 assists, 4.8 rebounds, and 3.6 steals and became only the second 1,000 point scorer in the school's history.

14.

Kyrie Irving had to sit out the first 30 days of St Patrick's season due to the transfer.

15.

At St Patrick, Kyrie Irving played with Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who was widely regarded as one of the best players in the class of 2011.

16.

Kyrie Irving was the MVP with 21.3 points and 4.3 assists per game.

17.

On January 19,2010, Kyrie Irving was selected to the 2010 Junior National Select Team.

18.

Kyrie Irving was selected to play in the 2010 McDonald's All-American Game and the 2010 Jordan Brand Classic, where he was named co-MVP with Harrison Barnes.

19.

In June 2010, Kyrie Irving was a part of the United States gold medal-winning team at the FIBA Americas Under-18 Championship.

20.

Kyrie Irving committed to Duke on October 22,2009, in a television broadcast on ESPNU.

21.

Kyrie Irving was a strong contender for NCAA Freshman of the Year until he suffered a severe ligament injury in his right big toe during the ninth game of the season.

22.

Kyrie Irving scored 28 points in what turned out to be his last game for Duke.

23.

Kyrie Irving announced that he would forgo his final three seasons of eligibility and enter the 2011 NBA draft, where he was selected with the first overall pick by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

24.

Kyrie Irving was named to the 2012 Rising Stars Challenge, where he played for Team Chuck.

25.

Kyrie Irving scored 34 points in the game, going 8-of-8 from three-point range, and earned MVP honors.

26.

Kyrie Irving won the 2012 NBA Rookie of the Year Award with 117 of a possible 120 first-place votes.

27.

Kyrie Irving was the only unanimous selection to the NBA All-Rookie First Team.

28.

Kyrie Irving played in the Cavaliers' next game, but the injury forced him to miss three weeks of action.

29.

Kyrie Irving became the youngest player in NBA history to score 40 points in Madison Square Garden; he was a year younger than Michael Jordan, who did it in 1985.

30.

Kyrie Irving finished with 15 points, four assists, and three rebounds.

31.

Kyrie Irving participated in the Rising Stars Challenge again, scoring 32 points for Team Shaq in a losing effort.

32.

Kyrie Irving participated in the Three-Point Contest and recorded 23 points in the final round to win the event.

33.

Kyrie Irving ended his second season with averages of 22.5 points, 5.9 assists, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.5 steals per game.

34.

Fans chose Kyrie Irving to be the starting point guard for the Eastern Conference in the 2014 NBA All-Star game.

35.

Kyrie Irving averaged 20.8 points, 6.1 assists, 3.6 rebounds, and 1.5 steals on the season.

36.

On July 10,2014, Kyrie Irving signed a five-year, $90 million contract extension with the Cavaliers.

37.

Kyrie Irving went on to help the Cavaliers reach the NBA Finals for just the second time in franchise history despite missing two games in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Atlanta Hawks with a knee injury.

38.

Kyrie Irving tied that mark with another 31-point game in Game 4 of the series, helping the Cavaliers sweep the Pistons.

39.

In July 2017, Kyrie Irving requested the Cavaliers to trade him, reportedly wanting to be more of the focal point of his own team instead of continuing to play alongside LeBron James.

40.

Kyrie Irving had a chance to tie it with a 3-pointer at the horn but missed.

41.

Kyrie Irving led Boston with 34 points, making 13 of 18 shots overall and going 4-for-6 from three-point range in the first three quarters.

42.

Kyrie Irving missed his first nine attempts from the field and did not score until finally connecting on a pair of free throws early in the third quarter.

43.

On July 7,2019, Kyrie Irving signed with the Brooklyn Nets in free agency.

44.

Kyrie Irving became the seventh player in franchise history to score 50 points or more in a single game, and joins Stephon Marbury as the only one to record 15 combined rebounds and assists.

45.

Kyrie Irving scored 25 of the Nets' 56 points in the first half.

46.

The next day, the Nets were scheduled to play the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, however Kyrie Irving left the arena prior to tip-off, upon learning of the death of Kobe Bryant.

47.

On February 18,2021, Kyrie Irving was named an Eastern Conference starter for the 2021 NBA All-Star Game, his seventh selection.

48.

Kyrie Irving sprained his right ankle after landing on Giannis Antetokounmpo's foot during Game 4 of the Conference Semifinals against the Milwaukee Bucks, and missed Game 5.

49.

On October 12,2021, the Nets' general manager Sean Marks announced that Kyrie Irving would be ineligible to play or practice with the team, due to the New York City COVID-19 vaccine mandate, until Kyrie Irving is vaccinated.

50.

However, Kyrie Irving remained subject to a different workplace vaccine mandate that remained in place.

51.

Kyrie Irving became only the second guard in NBA history who would have multiple 50-point games while shooting 75 percent from the floor.

52.

Brooklyn would go on to lose to Boston in four games, and Kyrie Irving was swept for the first time in his career.

53.

On January 26, Kyrie Irving was named an Eastern Conference starter for the 2023 NBA All-Star Game, his eighth selection and sixth as a starter.

54.

In 2012, Kyrie Irving was in contention for a position on the Australian team for the 2012 Olympics.

55.

Kyrie Irving was a member of the United States national team that competed in the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup.

56.

Kyrie Irving helped lead Team USA to the gold medal and was named the tournament's MVP.

57.

Kyrie Irving started all nine games in the tournament, averaging 12.1 points and 3.6 assists per game, including 26 points scored in the gold-medal game.

58.

Kyrie Irving was then named the 2014 USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year.

59.

In 2016, Kyrie Irving helped Team USA win the gold medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

60.

In 2012, Kyrie Irving played the role of Uncle Drew in a series of Pepsi Max advertisements.

61.

Kyrie Irving has starred as the character in a feature film, Uncle Drew, which features former NBA stars, and was released in June 2018.

62.

Kyrie Irving appeared on an episode of the Disney XD series Kickin' It in 2012, and guest starred on Family Guy, lending his voice for the season 17 episode "Big Trouble in Little Quahog".

63.

Kyrie Irving's cousin, Isaiah Briscoe, was a highly rated basketball player who played at the University of Kentucky before declaring for the 2017 NBA draft.

64.

In May 2011, Kyrie Irving made a promise to his father to finish his bachelor's degree at Duke within five years.

65.

Kyrie Irving's mother was known to the tribe, though she was "adopted out" at a young age, and their late grandmother and great-grandparents had ties to the reservation community.

66.

In November 2016, Kyrie Irving tweeted his support for the water protectors at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation who were demonstrating against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

67.

Kyrie Irving paid off student debt for students from Lincoln University.

68.

Kyrie Irving committed $1.5 million to help pay WNBA players who opted out of playing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

69.

Kyrie Irving donated over $300,000 to food banks and with City Harvest on his birthday.

70.

Kyrie Irving donated 17 pallets of food to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

71.

In February 2017, Kyrie Irving stated in an interview for a podcast that he believes that the Earth is flat.

72.

In September 2017, Kyrie Irving denied these claims and said that media misunderstood him as he was joking.

73.

In October 2018, Kyrie Irving apologized for his original flat Earth comments but stopped short of saying whether he still believed that the Earth is flat.

74.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and his hesitancy to receive a vaccine against the virus, Kyrie Irving shared and interacted with social media posts from a conspiracy theorist on Instagram, claiming that "secret societies are administering vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for a plan of Satan".

75.

On September 15,2022, Kyrie Irving shared a video on his Instagram story featuring a rant by InfoWars creator and far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

76.

Kyrie Irving made his first tweet espousing Black Hebrew Israelite doctrine in March 2021.

77.

On October 27,2022, Kyrie Irving tweeted a link to an Amazon listing page for Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, a 2018 film based on a book of the same name, which promotes Black Hebrew Israelite ideology.

78.

On October 29,2022, Kyrie Irving tweeted that deeming him antisemitic was "not justified", and that he intended to "learn from all walks of life and religions".

79.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that Kyrie Irving's suspension was "well-deserved", and said the ADL would reject Kyrie Irving's previously announced donation.