Dear Kyrie Irving

Hey. 

So I fantasise often about the moment I’ll spend some New York Times bestseller money on season tickets. In my dreams, where I happen to be a spirited New Yorker, it’s ofttimes courtside at the Knicks and with my brother beside me — as thanks for teaching me how to handwrite, how to be a man (long story), and for bringing basketball to my attention. Try as I might, though, I can’t seem to shake these Boston Celtics.

I thought the team a peculiar one, way back when on someone else’s Nintendo. Thirteen years in, however, I’ve pretty much seen it all. I’ve seen Kevin Garnett scream how possible literally anything is at the world. I’ve watched Rajon Rondo complicate roughly two years of yo-that-team-looks-like-it’s-tanking, and nothing bonds your soul with an American sports franchise like tanking. I’ve witnessed Isaiah Thomas lose a tooth, a sister, and then his place in the team within a matter of a few months. I’m watching Jayson Tatum turn into Kobe Bryant. Yet all indications, the most recent from you, suggest I can’t do both at the same time: I can’t be black and a die-hard fan of the Boston Celtics.

Last week, anticipating a heady reception in your first heathy visit to Boston with fans in the arena, you said you hoped the crowd would be able to ‘focus on basketball’. I thought this was an astonishing and also dangerous way to deflect from the fact that sports fans simply turn on their heroes sometimes, but what do I know, right? I’ve never actually been to Boston. Jaylen Brown responded intelligently and without antagonism, when he dismissed the idea that a basketball game mattered to making necessary strides in race matters. General Manager Danny Ainge, I suppose unfortunately, said he’d never had a player on his roster alert him to a negative racial experience in Boston. Going into game 4 of the Celtics’ playoff series with your Brooklyn Nets, the score was 2-1. The crowd gave it to you ‘cause they’re supposed to; ask Trae Young what it’s like to visit New York right now, or perhaps shoot Reggie Miller a text. I can’t speak to every experience you’ve had in Boston — I guess that’s between you and the city? — but it really did hurt to watch you scrape your shoe across the logo like that. 

At first I felt a kind of rage. One or two legends have come to your defense and said you should get to react how you want to in a hostile building. You may not remember this, Kyrie, partly cause I deleted the tweet a few hours later; but I wished you well when you signed for Brooklyn. You can’t catch East Coast games at all easily in Southern Africa, so us Celtics heads make do with the highlights mostly. When you were in them, I consumed more Celtics content than ever before in my life. It was and is an honour to watch you play, Kyrie. But … that organisation paid your salary, and was prepared to pay your salary for a whole lot longer. There are young black men on that roster now that continue to vouch for you, despite all the weird things you said about winning and leadership. There are young black men who dream of putting that very logo on their chests. 

Bill Russell endured years of vicious, out-and-out racism just so all of these things could be remotely possible. I’ve heard about how complicated life could be at Red Sox games; I know remotely why they had to rename Yawkey Way. But when you rub your sneaker across that particular portion of parquet, which of these black men and their experiences are you not denigrating?

Again, I don’t know what it really looks like, really feels like. I’m just a kid from Africa that wants to sell novels, tour the world, visit sports cathedrals.  All I can do is infer things from having seen Manchester by the Sea at least a gazillion times now. You know that scene in Good Will Hunting, when they slow-mo all the white kids beating the shit out of each other in the street? I’ve reached an age now where when I rewatch that I think, One of those packs of boys might be the type to stomp around on a black person — or maybe all of them might. But, you know, to an outsider like me reclamation seems to be the point. Degree of difficulty seems to be the point, which is why I root for one of the most self-destructive teams in world soccer; for an NFL team whose leaders took forever to disavow Donald Trump; and for the freaking Celtics, Kyrie.

Sports are supposed to be that rare thing that enable people, in perfectly scintillating moments, to not care what nationality, what creed, or what race they are as long they’re wearing the same colours. If there is work to be done, to fight and redefine what these symbols stand for, then why would we back away, Kyrie? Why would we cede the city, especially if we have brothers and sisters there, still, just trying to make it work? 

Everywhere on earth that there are black people, my brodie, is and shall always be my country. You owe it to to their efforts to not besmirch a crest (whatever its history) that affords them the chance to be as beautiful as they are black — to distract from all the basic things America, not just Boston, still isn’t prepared to give them. You owe that basic respect to the handful of young men trying to shoot buckets through its hoops. You owe it to Bill Russell, who stayed, who endured, despite absolutely fucking everything. I don’t really know; I’m just a kid from Africa that wants to write novels; I’ve never been to Boston, etc. But that feels like the point, Kyrie.

Today I realised — no, I remembered — I’m not mad at you. Just heartbroken, mostly.