Cavs guard Kyrie Irving spoke with RealGM.com at Team USA practice Monday and admitted that he’s struggled with leadership in the past.
“I haven’t been a leader – not at all,” Irving told RealGM.
“Everybody asks me if this is my year to be a leader … I haven’t been so far though, not at all,” Irving said. “I’ve just been a kid trying to figure it out. There’s no perfect way to be a leader, and coming in as a 19-year-old kid and having everything bearing on your shoulders, there are a lot of ups and downs. Now it’s about being the best every single day and not being afraid.
Irving will be teammates with the ultimate leader in LeBron James, so the question has to be asked now, does it really even matter. Irving admitted that he’s excited about returning to a team that is now veteran laden.
“I’m more than excited with our new veterans. I’m really excited just from the standpoint of how the locker room is going to go and how to really be a professional. I’m not saying that the veterans that we had weren’t professionals themselves, but we didn’t have enough. Given the right and wrong things to do in the league, I’ve had to learn on my own and that’s what some of us been doing.
“Now, we have guys who’ve been in the league for years, guys who’ve won championships and have had to give a piece of their game for the greater good of the team. It’s something I admire and something I’m going to learn from.”