Kyrie Irving glad he gets to chase history with three Warriors as teammates

Jesse Spector

Kyrie Irving glad he gets to chase history with three Warriors as teammates image

NEW YORK — Since NBA players started taking part in the Olympics in 1992, only three players have won a league title at the start of the summer, then finished it by winning a gold medal. That's Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan in 1992, Pippen again in 1996 and LeBron James in 2012.

This August in Rio de Janeiro, Kyrie Irving will try to become the fourth.

MORE: Team USA's full men's basketball roster

“It comes down to, I had a goal that I wanted to accomplish in the season with my team, the Cleveland Cavaliers,” Irving told Sporting News at the Team USA roster unveiling Monday in Harlem. “Now, when the opportunity with USA Basketball starts knocking at your door, to be part of an Olympic team, it’s hard to turn it down.

"It’s been a dream of mine for a long time, and I want to be a part of something bigger than myself again, other than my own team. It would be amazing, but I understand the amount of work that it takes to win, not just a championship, but the gold medal. Playing with USA on your chest, playing for so many people — it’s bigger than all of us. I’m glad that I could do it with these guys here.”
 
These guys include three members of the Warriors team whose hearts Irving broke with his tiebreaking shot in Game 7 of the NBA Finals eight days ago. Harrison Barnes, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson all go from being Irving’s rivals to his teammates with the red, white and blue.

“If you look at all three of them as individuals, what they bring to their team, they’re winners,” Irving said. “They’re also championship winners, and they know what it takes in order to sacrifice to win something big. I’m so glad we have them on the team.”

That does not mean Irving let the 2015 NBA champions forget who won the 2016 NBA title when Team USA assembled.

“He had some jokes when I first saw him,” Barnes said. “We got past all that, and we’ll have fun playing on the same team.”

Barnes might not be pursuing the same kind of individual history that Irving is, but he does take the Finals loss as motivation to make sure that this seemingly unstoppable team doesn’t walk away empty-handed.

“It definitely does,” Barnes said when asked if losing to the Cavaliers made the Olympics mean more. “This whole experience, it would be great, because it allows you to focus on something that wasn’t the pain of losing the Finals. You want to bring some hardware home this summer.”

The sentiment of desire for victory held true for Barnes’ fellow Warriors, but not the idea that losing in the Finals made the Olympics any more important.

“Hell no,” Green said. “If we won the Finals, I wanted to win the Olympics. It’s completely different. You don’t get this opportunity. First of all, it only comes around once every four years. You don’t know if you’re getting the opportunity every four years, with the country we live in where there’s so many great players. The way I look at it, I’ve got one shot at it, and I want to go for the gold.” 

Thompson landed somewhere in between.

“Even if I won the NBA title, I’d still be pursuing this,” Thompson said. “Obviously, this helps my offseason a little more. You feel a little better about yourself if you have an opportunity to win gold. You use the loss and appreciate it, use the loss as motivation to get better. You can’t hold onto it because every season is such a long, grueling season. You’ve got to play with a clear mind. That’s what I believe. It still really stinks because it’s still fresh — a tie game with a minute left, you always think about the what-ifs, but it’s not going to hold back what I do with USA because this is an awesome experience."

Jesse Spector