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Okay well I will preface it with this, the last 14-15 minutes of the game he seemed to turn it around and did a lot of positive things, but I have to believe it was because he got chewed out by somebody. I almost, wth no source to back to this up, feel lke this was a moment where his actual father, not daddy LeBron, either called him, or was in toen and somehow got to Kyrie and got in his face.
But I said I had a few paragraphs for his body language during th first 30-36 minutes of the game and here they are.
His body language wasn't negative. It wasn't whiny or pouty like you sometimes see with LBJ whe n he doesn't get his way. It wasn't confused like you see from young guys with new coaches. His body language, to put it in one word, was empty.
He just had an aura of emptiness about him. I never want to accuse a guy of not caring, but I don't think Kyrie really had much concern for anything that was going on on the offensive end, defensive end, of in the huddle. He was completely disengaged. Defensively, I wouldn't even call it a lack of effort. He was running around and he was going through screens, but he just wasn't going through any screen that actually meant anything. If I was a non-basketball fan, and I saw Kyrie out there in a game, and let's just say that game was a pickup game at the park...I would wonder why Kyrie bothered to even be there. He was elsewhere mentally, and it showed.
He seems to like his teammates and coach fine, but, and I have never seen this from him, he is having a disconnect with the game of basketball right now. I don't know what's wrong with him. I don't know if he has girl problems, if he's got personal issues, if he doesn't trust his body, or what, but he isn' out on the court to ply basketball at a superstar level. LeBron is completely dumbfounded by it, you can see it in his face. He is doing every trick in the book to get Kyrie engaged, but right now it is only working for spurts at best. Last year before his knee injury, it was consistent and Kyrie looked like he was becoming his own version of D-Wade with a bit of a twist. Tonight he looked more like he was on his way to being Steve Francis.
I just think the kneecap injury messed his psyche up and he needs some kind of basketball Buddha to get him back to his normal self. He needs 12 hard weeks with USA Basketball. LeBron can only do so much. I don't feel like Kyrie has any problems with the team like Stephen A. Smith said, I think Kyrie is having internal issues with the game of basketball. I always thought it was weird how the Cavs and Kyrie's camp had that little media battle over his injuries last year. Something just didn't set right with me.
His body language is dead. He's constantly off-balance, even when just walking to the gatorade cooler he seems tilted somehow. It's hard to explain. He will call the play. He will pass the ball, he will to to a spot on the floor, he will make a move with the ball, but he's not doing anything with the precision or emphasis he had even in his rookie year. He walks an awful lot around the court, even on dead balls, or after a workout dill or move. Kyrie's always walking. Everyone else is jogging. Watch Steph play, the dude jogs around the arena to shake hands and give autographs. Kyrie is just walking around aimlessly, and it translates itself on the court too, even though when Kyrie decides to start jogging he's as good as we all know he can be, but he simply chooses to walk . He's in his own head and seeing it in person bothered me a lot. He's not right. His skills have not eroded, he has great size, speed, handles, athleticism. He has the lateral movement to defend. He even has the technique. He just seems dead. His body language, if I had to describe it in one word, was dead for the first 38-40 minutes of regulation. It was just dead. And I don't know why. And I don't like it, and it's hurting the entire team on both ends of the court, and it's really KILLING Kevin Love because Kyrie is having a really hard time making a post entry pass. Not because he can't, not because Love is getting bullied, but because Kyrie doesn't wan't to, again, ddead body language. Dead. That's all there is to it. I don't know what else to say.
After being a basketball zombie all-game, he then literally just snapped out of it in the fourth quarter. It's like in between the third and fourth quarter some victoria secret model blew him in the bathroom and the dude came out and was all of a sudden rookie of the year Kyrie, all-star game Kyrie, pre-injury playoff Kyrie, 33-5 elite LBJ running mate Kyrie.
If anyone has any theories, (Gouri, anyone
, I'd ove to hear someone explain what I'm seeing.
