Kyrie Irving is one of the NBA’s best point guards, but he is also one of the NBA’s most woke players. Irving is a flat Earth truther and that revelation turned All-Star Weekend in New Orleans into a discussion of the merits of generally accepted knowledge, such as the Earth being round.
Irving isn’t afraid to divulge his strangest beliefs or have people think he’s a bit weird, and he proved that again with his return to the Road Trippin’ Podcast with Cavs teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye. Irving wouldn’t back down from his flat Earth theory, but that’s not the important part of his latest podcast appearance.
What is far more intriguing was the revelation that Irving insists he can control his dreams and used a recent dream to say goodbye to former teammate Jordan McRae.
Irving said he was listening to an audiobook by physicist David Bohm and philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti that’s a conversation between the two about intimacy and freedom of thought as he was going to sleep, and then gets into the story about how he ended up being visited by McRae in his dreams. The account of the dream is incredibly weird, but here it is, as transcribed by CBS Sports’ James Herbert.
“So I’m listening to [the book],” said Irving. “I turn off the TV. I don’t watch TV anymore when I take naps ‘cause I’m listening. I’m listening. So while I’m awake, or not while I’m awake, while I’m sleeping, there’s this moment where I’m like, ‘ah, man I feel like I want to get up right now, but I can’t.’ So I felt like I was looking at myself sleep, but I was sleeping on my stomach and my hands were back. I never really sleep on my stomach, but I had to change my style I was sleeping at, so I started sleeping on my stomach.
“I kept seeing, like, I kept hearing the door and I kept seeing somebody and I kept feeling something go over me, like, over my back,” Irving said. “And I’m like, ‘I can’t wake up, I can’t wake up,’ but I’m so conscious of what’s going on, like, I know what’s going on. But I’m, like, very, very conscious, but the thing about it is, I don’t know if you guys have the same thing, but I can control my dreams. Like before when I was younger, when there would be like, OK, you would get into like a chase with somebody or you would get into a fight with somebody or you were doing something with your family members, I’m very conscious of my dreams and what’s going on and I can control them. So while I’m conscious, I’m still, I’m not awake, I’m in a deep sleep, but I’m watching myself and I feel like Jordan is trying to say goodbye.
“So like I’m like ‘damn, would the cleaning lady let him in? Would somebody let him in?’” Irving said. “So I kept hearing the door open, but I still can’t wake up. So I’m still feeling a presence over me. I’m still feeling a presence. But I’m not scared, I’m not scared, I’m not nervous, I’m not fearful of it. I’m just like, ‘yo, wake up.’ So I wake up, and I’m still so tired, and I wake up and I kind of yell it. I’m like, ‘I love you, bro!’ I’m like, ‘I love you bro!’ And nobody’s in the room. Like, but I’m waking up and I’m telling myself, tell him one more time that you love him. Tell him one more time. Like, I’m sleeping, I’m so conscious of what’s going on, I’m like, ‘wake up, tell him one more time.’ And I finally woke up and I was like in this, I was frozen, but when I woke up, I was like, ‘I love you, bro!’”
I take back what I said earlier. Kyrie Irving is the most woke person in the NBA, and there might not be any real competition.
