What are Kyrie's priorities that you disagree with?
His brand over winning.
Himself over team.
Didn't realize you and Kyrie had such a close relationship that you can so adeptly assess his priorities.
Lol. Are those things you need to be close friends to assess?
Kyrie has talked about this being a business, and wanting to expand his brand. He felt the need to leave a three-time Finalist to do that.
I see it more like this:
It's widely assumed LBJ is leaving CLE next year. Kyrie has already experienced CLE without LBJ, and it wasn't pretty. The CLE organization has clearly put a priority on keeping LBJ happy, possibly at the expense of Kyrie's happiness. The Cleveland organization is currently in a state of (perpetual?) chaos.
IMHO Kyrie is simply leaving before LBJ leaves him high and dry next year, and I see nothing wrong with that.
What's the motivation to leave BEFORE Lebron leaves though? Why not just contend for a championship again this year and force a trade next year when Lebron leaves? You're not in any worse of a position then.
This was an emotional decision based on reasoning none of us are privy too. If you want to "grow your brand" the best way to do that is by winning another championship. If you want to "elevate your game and work on your craft" you do that by training with the best player in the world and competing at and against the highest level every day. Does it really make sense to anyone that in year 6, after having the best statistical season of his career, Kyrie is suddenly concerned he's not being coached up enough?
The only thing I'm sure about after that interview is that Kyrie wasn't being 100% forthright. Any time someone gives a 1000 word answer where a 1 word answer would suffice you know the BS is flowing.
My best guess is that after the finals Lebron told Kyrie that his lack of defense hurt the team. Kyrie, tired of hearing for years how much his defense sucks when he's a transcendent offensive player who's not allowed to run his team's offense, took it poorly started passive-aggressively sniping at Lebron on social media and then forced a trade to Boston.
And you know what? It doesn't really matter. Maybe he thinks he's better than Lebron, maybe he thinks he could out-coach Tyronn Lue, maybe he really wanted to play with his friend Jason Tatum. At some point the interviews will stop and this guy will have to lace up and play. We'll know a lot more about him after this 82 game season than we would after 82 more interviews like that.
It took me a long time to figure it out, but the player Kyrie reminds me of the most is Kareem Abdul-Jabar. Kareem was another ego-centric unstoppable offensive player that wanted to seem more profoundly intelligent than everyone else, and never wanted to play defense. Like Kyrie, Kareem could do things offensively no one else was capable of. Also like Kyrie, Kareem was a first overall pick who played his first six seasons in Milwaukee winning one championship before requesting a trade.