Kyrie Irving isn’t angry that John Wall questioned the validity of his All-Star votes. In fact, he kind of agrees with Wall.
Irving says he has no beef with the Wizards point using him as an example of why the NBA's All-Star voting system is flawed. Wall called it a “joke” that Irving had more votes than him despite having only played a handful of games last month.
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"There were no ill-will emotions. There was no personal beef between John and me," Irving said, via Cleveland.com. "I respect him as a player, as a point guard in this league, and as a great player in this league, so for him to say that, the All-Star (voting) becomes a popularity contest and what the fans want to see. So their respective opinions (are) based on that.”
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Irving has missed the majority of the season while recovering from surgery to repair a fractured kneecap. Despite that, Irving had the second-most votes among Eastern Conference guards (138,191) behind Dwyane Wade (300,595) when Wall made his comments. Wall was fifth at that time with 103,094 votes.
"For me, my respect for what I have for John goes way beyond the court, so there was no ill-will beef or anything like that," Irving said. "But he did make a valid point on me only playing two games and he was Eastern Conference Player of the Month, so that kind of goes without saying, so when you have feats like that, accomplishments like that, all you can do is respect it."
Irving looked like an All-Star on Monday night, scoring 25 points, grabbing six rebounds and dishing out six assists in Cleveland's 122-100 win over Toronto. The two will meet Wednesday in Washington.