Kyrie Irving reacts to Stephen Curry’s moon-landing controversy

Last week, Steph Curry caused a major stir when it was revealed in a podcast appearance that he doubted the moon landing.

The comments drew backlash from the science community. NASA spoke out and invited Curry to tour the Johnson Space Center in Houston ( he accepted). And Curry spent the following days walking back on his remarks.

Notably, Curry wasn’t the first NBA player to dabble with conspiracy theories. Kyrie Irving famously stated that he thought the Earth was flat and spent years being mocked for that scientifically false conspiracy. Irving eventually apologized for the comments this year.

On Tuesday, Irving was asked about Curry’s comments, and, oh man, Irving had quite the response. The Celtics guard spoke to reporters for two straight minutes about Curry’s conspiracy theory. You could tell the subject was very personal to him.

Irving said:

“Sometimes, I feel like – even myself – you can speak ahead of yourself whether or not you believe it or not. And you end up getting caught because you’re on this false platform of a thing where you’re not even a human being anymore. You’re now extrapolated for all the information that you know and think. And now you have to fit a mold of something that you’re clearly not. You’re more than just a basketball player that puts it in the hoop and they subject you to being just that. It’s unfair at times. Obviously, we’re not as educated as – in terms of schooling, in terms knowledge of going to school to these universities, everyone … – I think probably that misjudgment is warranted, it’s natural. Everyone feels like they have a place in this world to question anything or question somebody.

“Look at what social media has done nowadays. Anybody could say anything on Twitter, but one thing someone says with a check next to their name is the biggest thing going. Nothing’s really original. It’s just history repeating itself all over again. We’ve had people in history say some things that they believed and they stuck with their whole entire lives whether they be prominent individuals in society or not. So, I try to not pay attention to that mold at all. I try not to pay attention to whether it’s insulting or not. I don’t live my life based on biases or judgements. Nor do I base it on thinking or judging someone else for what they believe in as well. It’s society, though. It’s where we live in America where people say (expletive) all the time about one another. And it’s mean, bad. Kids see it. Like, everyone gets a piece of it, and then it’s the next story. Next thing that’s coming out of someone’s mouth. There’s world hunger going on. Like political things going on. There’s so many higher things on the totem pole of society that matter to human beings.

“But hey, Steph Curry says that he doesn’t believe in the moon (landing). It’s the thing all over. It’s on CNN, and they say we’re just jocks, we’re just athletes. But it’s on your channel. You know what I mean? We’re that but you don’t want us to be that. So and whoever ‘you’ is then I don’t know what mold you want me to be.”

So yeah … that was worth the wait.

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