Review of "Kyrie Irving"

Another of the new baskeball books for the upcoming season is one that was just released on Kyrie Irving.  It is a very detailed look at his baskeball career and how he is both considered one of the best but also heavily criticized.  Here is my review of this book.

Title/Author:

“Kyrie Irving: Uncle Drew, Little Mountain and Enigmatic NBA Superstar” by Martin Gitlin

Tags:

Basketball, professional, biography, Cavaliers, Celtics

Publish date:

October 1, 2019

Length:

224 pages

Rating: to

3 ½ of 5 stars (good)

Review:

Kyrie Irving is one of the most exciting offensive players in professional basketball currently playing in the NBA.  His one-on-one game leaves defenders in the dust as he is among the very best at isolation play.  His play on the court, his relationship with his parents and some of his off-court statements that leave people puzzled are all documented in this book by Martin Gitlin.

As a pure basketball book, this was excellent as Gitlin writes about Irving's basketball life in high school, his brief time at Duke and his years with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics (the book was completed before Irving signed in 2019 with the Brooklyn Nets) in great detail.  Basketball junkies will love the details on Irving's contributions in key games for both teams, especially in the 2016 NBA Finals when he made the decisive three point shot late in game 7 to give the Cavaliers their first championship.  Known in Cleveland as simply "The Shot", there is a whole chapter devoted to this moment.

Speaking of the chapters, they are all short in length but long in basketball information. The best part of this information was the explanation of some of the advanced statistical analytics for basketball, something that may not be familiar to many readers. They are used to explain the criticism behind the weakest part of Irving's game, his defense. This has cause some friction between Irving and his teammates at times, and also been a frequent reason for his criticism in the press.

While the book is plentiful in basketball information, there is not as much information available on the rest of his life, save for his youth when he lost his mother at four and grew even closer to his father as a result.  He still kept his mother, who was part Native American, in his heart as he even was anointed with the Native American name of "Little Mountain."  There is also a few sentences about some of his more unusual statements, such as his questioning of the existence of dinosaurs and whether the earth is round.  While they are in the book, it would have been an even better read had these topics as well as some more about Irving the person would have been included to balance the amount of basketball writing.  

In fairness, Gitlin does mention at the beginning that Irving and his agent would not be contributing in any manner to the book and that would make including more information on his personal life difficult.  Nonetheless, I did believe that this book is one that basketball junkies and hard-core fans will enjoy but for those who enjoy memoirs that are more about the person will come away feeling shortchanged.  Overall, it was a good read for me as the information on the basketball analytics alone made it worthwhile.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

                                                                       

Book Format Read:

Paperback                                                                                                                                        

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Kyrie-Irving-Mountain-Enigmatic-Superstar-ebook/dp/B07Q6P5XZT/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 


https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496213495/