Kyrie Irving, the Beautiful Heretic

Basketball is intrinsically hostile to orthodoxy. There is no single way to excel at it. As it has evolved through various eras, the NBA has been dominated by players big and small, ones who could shoot and ones who stayed close to the basket, brilliant passers and transformative defenders. We have celebrated each of them for what they were best at. Larry Bird wasn't quick, but he could score. Allen Iverson wasn't strong, but he was fearless. The game requires such a diverse range of talents that no player could ever possess them all. So we give up on all-encompassing perfection and enjoy particular players for their particularities—what they do like no one else does.

So why does Kyrie Irving catch so much shit? There might not be a dribbler better able to improbably squirm through crowded spaces, and in less claustrophobic surroundings, he delights in sending defenders the wrong way with feints and crossovers. On a good night, he can score from anywhere—under the basket or 26 feet from it, falling out-of-bounds or stepping back along the elbow. He is comically audacious. His most thrilling moments are also punchlines. The thing he is trying to do seems preposterous, then fwoop! The ball is falling through the hoop, and all you can do is laugh.

Irving is a toy chest of a player, and that should be enough to gain him adoration, but he carries a burden he can't quite bear. He's a point guard, which is the only position left in the sport that comes yoked with a rigid set of expectations. You can hear it in the Chris Paul hosannas and the counter-punching Russell Westbrook crit: a point guard is supposed to control the pace of the game, to favor passing over shooting, to be a steward to his teammates' success. This is, the dogma goes, the correct way to play the position.

The strange thing is, no other position is tethered to a platonic ideal anymore. We've accepted and learned to love big men who shoot threes and shooting guards who drive more than they spot up. What is a power forward? It might a player who blocks shots from the weak side or bodies up in the post, who sets screens and rolls or who parks his butt on the block and calls for the ball. Position used to be a designation, now it's a suggestion. Teams focus on making sure they do all the things it takes to win a basketball game rather than devising a highly organized division of labor. Is your center your best passer? You can probably find a way to make that work, with a bit of imagination.

The scoring point guard is the last affront to positionality that's still profane. John Wall has emerged over the past year-and-a-half as his generation's great facilitator and draws glowing reviews for his floor generalship and pass-first approach. This all fine and well—Wall is a terrific player—but it speaks to how maturity is a narrow path for point guards. They become more like Chris Paul and Isiah Thomas, or they are perceived as stunted: stubbornly, myopically chasing buckets.

Perhaps if Kyrie Irving had been a prototypical distributor during his first three seasons in Cleveland, his teams would have won more games. Looking up and down those rosters, it's more likely Tristan Thompson's scoring average would have risen a bit, and that the Cavs would have still resided in the Eastern Conference's basement.

That point, however valid it might have been, is now moot: Irving plays with LeBron James, who is a superior playmaker. Recognizing this, Kyrie has largely deferred to LeBron all season, developing a keen sense of when to pick his spots and when to let the four-time MVP go to work. Kevin Love's bereftness is palpable and well-chronicled, but Irving understands precisely where he fits in. His shooting numbers are up, and his turnovers are down. He works a bit harder on defense because he doesn't have to carry the offense anymore. His game isn't ascending to some unforeseen pinnacle, but he's as good as he has ever been, and more enjoyable for the fact that he's finally doing his thing for a team with lofty aspirations.

Irving is a gifted and creative scorer. It's what he's best at. This is a skill to behold, not only on nights when he's dropping 55 in LeBron's absence—though: sure, spit-take away—but on a game-to-game basis. Watching him samba into the paint and hit a spinning lay-in is a singular experience, like John Wall running the break, like Russell Westbrook fuming down the lane. Irving isn't exactly a point guard, but he is something else.