There is a strange linguistic problem that follows Kyrie Irving around the NBA. People who have coached him, played with him or studied him for a living all reach for the same superlatives, then promptly lose the words to support them. One commentator, asked to put Irving's gift in perspective, gave up trying.
"I have so many words to praise Kyrie that I end up with absolutely none. He's the most gifted player the NBA has ever seen," the commentator said.
That phrase — most gifted ever — is a bigger swing than even most Hall of Famers attract. Yet it keeps getting taken by people who are paid to be careful. Another league analyst made the same wager in calmer language but with no less conviction.
"He's one of the most skilled players that I've ever seen. You'd be hard-pressed to name 10 guys that have ever played in this league who are more skilled than he is in my opinion," he said.
What the people closest to Irving describe is not flash, despite the highlight reel. It is a player whose two hands are so equal that he often opens a possession looking like a left-hander, then quietly switches halfway through.
"He has the best gifts I've ever seen of any NBA player," one analyst said. "I've never seen a guy in my NBA life that feels better at times shooting with his off hand than he does with his primary hand. If Kyrie's off in a game with his right hand, he will literally go exclusively to his left hand."
The spectacular plays — the in-traffic finishes, the ankle-breakers, the floaters with hands in his face — drown out the boring point his coaches keep trying to make. Irving, for all the showmanship, is a fundamentals nerd.
"We also get blinded by the spectacular plays. He's one of the most fundamentally sound players that we have," one coach said. "If you watch Kyrie shoot an open pull-up jumper, it's like how you would teach someone to shoot it. His base is perfect and wide. He jumps straight up and down. He holds his follow through."
A former coach who had Irving years ago described a player who has matured through patience as much as practice — the same handle, the same balance, but a slower, more surgical pulse.
"Another balance, the handle, and the ability to be very patient," he said. "You couldn't get this Kyrie. When I had him in 2016, he was a killer. He wants to kill you every moment, every second. But now you can see he's just letting the game come to him."
For teammates, the awe is even harder to suppress because they see the casual version. The morning shootaround Kyrie. The 7 a.m. Kyrie. The Kyrie who looks half-asleep until the ball is in his hands.
"I get to see it every day. It still amazes me to this day. It will still amaze me till the end of days we play together. So I mean it's just unbelievable," one teammate said. "Even in practice you can see some of this stuff. He plays the same in the game."
What his current teammates emphasise more than the handle, though, is the leadership. The locker-room voice. The Kyrie who, his coach noted, organises huddles even when he is on the bench.
"Kyrie, man, he's like the engine and we just follow him," one teammate said. "He just led the way for us tonight. He's such a great leader for us. Young guys, guys who've been in the league for a minute, we kind of just follow him."
Another coach echoed the leadership theme. "Vocally. Obviously it shows on the court, but in the locker room, he's encouraging guys. He's encouraging guys to take the right shot. He's talking out defense, he's talking out offense. Anything he sees on the court, he's vocal about it," he said.
It is, in the end, a strange consensus. Irving's championship CV and his career arc are well-trodden ground. The verdict from inside his locker rooms is more interesting and more difficult to argue with: a player whose game looks like a coaching clinic, whose two hands work like a magician's, and whose only real ceiling, on the technical side, is the imagination of whoever is guarding him.
