Irving's Mood Swings Are a Well-Kept Secret in the NBA

The 6x All-Star has a history of having episodes, even in public.

The Brooklyn Nets are three games into their first season with NBA champions Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving on the roster, but it’s gotten off to a bumpy start. The Nets are 1-2 and now reports are coming out that it’s a well-known thing that their top superstar this season, Irving, has pretty bad mood swings.

The news broke today in a feature that ESPN published. Reportedly these mood swings were documented before the 6x All-Star announced in June that he was coming to Brooklyn. Even former teammates have confirmed.

According to the feature the mood swings make Nets officials “queasy” and it’s something that they don’t speak on often. This begs the question, are these mood swings more serious than the team is letting on?

Think about it, for a team to feel the need to keep mood swings under wraps they have to be pretty significant. Athletes are like everyone else, and can be triggered by certain things and deal with successes and failures in different ways. Therefore if there were reports of mood swings that came out about Irving after a loss (for example) why would anyone bat an eye?

However, that’s not the case here. One of these mood swings occurred in the Nets’ preseason trip to China a few weeks ago. During this trip the Nets won both bouts they had against the Lakers.

For what it’s worth, overall the NBA’s most recent trip to China definitely can’t be described as smooth sailing. Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest. This caused a big controversy that caused Morey’s boss, Tilman Fertitta, to disassociate himself with Morey as a kneejerk reaction.

“You know, so many different events have been canceled throughout our time there, and all we kept saying is…we flew all of these miles to come over to china—we would love to play the game of basketball in front of the fans,” said LeBron James.

James said this after emphasizing how the trip to China was far from refreshing.

With all of that being said, why would it affect Irving to the point of him having mood swings? Especially when his team at this point hadn’t lost in the preseason yet.

That’s where the mystery lies. We don’t know if these mood changes are random or if there’s more to this story than we all know.

Let’s not forget how at one point during Irving’s stint in Boston that in a matter of four months (from October 2018-February 2019) Irving went from telling fans in Boston that he intended on resigning there to saying “ask me July 1,” when being asked if his free agency plans were the same.

Now that these mood changes have been brought to light you can bet that the media will closely monitor his temperament going forward.

Needless to say if the Nets lose more than expected this season this will most likely be brought up more often. The more they win the less you’ll hear about it.