Check Out the Flat Earth Machine at Kyrie’s Sneaker Event

Oh give me a break.

Kyrie Irving’s new Nike shoes are the official sneakers of the Flat Earth movement. 

When the designs were released last month, they included a “All Seeing Eye” image with a message to “challenge everyone to seek their own answers beyond the ones that are given to us by books, media, internet, etc.” As I wrote at the time, that’s asinine because every time Kyrie decides to seek his own answers he ends up deeper down some conspiracy theory rabbit hole. 

But that’s not all. An event for the Kyrie 4’s in Boston on Tuesday includes props illustrating how the bad guys trick us into thinking Earth is round. 

It’s insane that Kyrie is now most famous not for being “the guy with the sick handle” but instead for being “the wacko whose most deeply held belief is that Earth is flat.” And Nike is clearly willing to go all-in on the Flat Earth nonsense to market his new shoes. There’s even a Flat Earth reference in a new TV commercial that debuted on Christmas. 

Nike might be doing this with a wink and a nudge, just exploiting their pitchman’s most notable off-court personality trait, but make no mistake—Kyrie really believes this stuff. And kids are starting to believe it too, just because Kyrie says so. That’s what makes this so infuriating. It’s just not true, no matter how many mirrors you use.