Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving has been all over the news lately thanks to his reported trade request, but let’s take a moment to re-visit another side of Irving—the side that may or may not believe that the earth is flat.
The all-star point guard had plenty of people shaking their heads at his opinion, which he first revealed during an appearances on his teammates’ podcast in February. (The jury’s still out on whether or not he was joking—he later said he found the media’s reaction “hilarious“.)
Apparently, he also inadvertently convinced some young minds in the process.
In an NPR article published on Friday titled The ongoing battle between science teachers and fake news, middle-school teacher Nick Gurol talks about how Irving’s statements have filtered down to his students.
“And immediately I start to panic,” said Gurol. “How have I failed these kids so badly they think the Earth is flat just because a basketball player says it?”
“They think that I’m part of this larger conspiracy of being a round-Earther. That’s definitely hard for me because it feels like science isn’t real to them.”
Wait, what? #LeBronJames responds to #KyrieIrving's claim that the earth is flat. pic.twitter.com/ruYO2euSZI
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) February 18, 2017
“What I’ve been taught is that the earth is round,” Irving told Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson back in February. “But if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move and the fact that, can you really think of us rotating around the sun and all planets aligned, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these planets.”
[relatedlinks]
