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Kyrie Irving got super honest about his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers on his Twitch stream recently.
Irving was the No.1 overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, landing with the Cavaliers and spending six seasons in Ohio before being traded to Boston in 2017.
While he left with a championship ring from the Cavaliers’ historic 2016 title run, Irving says the early years weren’t easy.
“To have started my career with… I love Cleveland, don’t get me wrong. I’m appreciative of all the things that they’ve done for me, but at the same time, I would’ve loved to choose the franchise I wanted to go to,” Irving said speaking on a recent livestream. “…I would’ve loved to develop next to some of my favorite players and some of my favorite people because being a young player, when you’re on a team that’s not winning a lot of games – it’s a lot of bad habits that form, and that’s what ended up happening to me when I was very young.
“I had a lot of bad habits; I was not a winner; I was not a good loser at all; I take my accountability; I had a lot of bad habits as a young player, and that came from losing games and just trying to get buckets all the time.”
Kyrie Irving reflects on the early stages of his NBA career
“I had a lot of bad habits as a young player, and that came from losing games and just trying to get buckets all the time… When I’m done playing, you guys will hear the real story.” pic.twitter.com/CcrL61MJkk
— FearBuck (@FearedBuck) August 9, 2025
During his time with the Cavs, Irving became Rookie of the Year and a four-time All-Star, establishing himself as one of the league’s premier guards.
But when it came time to move on, he insists it wasn’t about LeBron James.
“It’s not that I disliked playing with Bron at any time; it was just literally my time to move on, and that’s what people gotta accept,” Irving said. “They want a deeper detail, dive in terms of what happened, but it’s like it was my time to move on. I don’t care if I’m remembered as that person; it was my decision.”
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