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Anyone remember A River Runs Through It? There’s a scene where the Brad Pitt character breaks off from his father’s teaching and just starts to improvise and it is just artwork with a fishing pole.
That’s Kyrie Irving right now. Except, you know, with a basketball.
“I think when you have inner peace it makes your job a lot easier coming in and figuring things out, not getting ahead of yourself kind of wanting the future to happen now,” Irving said. “You have goals that you set, you want to attain them. But I think going through it and figuring it out is the most enjoyable part. You’ve gotta enjoy the pain and suffering as much as you enjoy the happiness, and going up and having highs on the season. So just enjoying it and making sure my teammates are enjoying it. Make sure we’re smiling, having a great time. Just having a great time competing and doing what we love — I think that’s the best part about this.”
“Patience. Patience. Patience,” Irving said. “Because even for myself, I think at this point in my career it’s not necessarily about my skills or my talent, it’s more or less how do I echo greatness to our group every single day and figure out what that looks like for us. That’s been the biggest challenge for me is just being patient on that end of really learning my teammates. I think I’ve learned my teammates in the past, but I think knowing them every single day and having fun coming to work is one of the most important things that I can do for the rest of my career.”
“When you have to care about a whole entire group, really depend on just learning who you’re playing with every single day, who is coaching you, that relationship, that’s far more important to me now that it is just being able to be the young guy fourth year in the league, fifth year or whatever, trying to get a bunch of points and assists and be in the top standings. As long as we’re winning and we’re up in the top of the teams and my teammates are feeling good, I’m happy.”