Many were critical of Kyrie Irving before the NBA restarted the 2019-20 season in the Disney bubble in late July. But there has been a recent shift in the perception of Brooklyn Nets point guard’s comments because of the Milwaukee Bucks’ protest of Game 5 of their first-round series against the Orlando Magic which led to a brief pause of the 2020 NBA Playoffs as the rest of the playoff teams met to reflect on their decision to play basketball while social injustice is still a forefront issue in the country.

ESPN analyst Jay Williams is among those who believe Irving was right about his concerns over resuming the season while players were helping the Black Lives Matter movement.

But, Williams understands why there were issues between the Nets superstar and those who wanted to play, which the ESPN analyst explained to Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson of Heavy.com:

Ky has always been extremely smart. Extremely smart. What I try to talk about when I’m on-air is people have talents in different aspects. Incredibly talented basketball player. Incredibly smart individual. I don’t think the message always translates from here (Williams points to his head) to here (Williams points to his mouth) the right way sometimes. I think, sometimes, that gets lost. I think one of the things that makes it difficult for Ky is we have a hard time of letting go of your past history. We take, ‘Well, he wasn’t a leader in Boston and looks what happened in Boston, or look what happened in Cleveland and LeBron ,’ and all these different things. One of the things I get frustrated about the way the public perceives Kyrie is we don’t allow him the opportunity to grow. I think Kyrie Irving has grown tremendously over the last couple of years of his life, and it’s not easy.

I do ultimately think that Kyrie was correct. Unfortunately, I think sometimes about how you communicate those thoughts and the position that CP3 was in, that lack of communication I think that sometimes those are the things that hurt, ultimately, the perception of Kyrie.

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