Nick Cannon Believes Kyrie Irving Is Being Dehumanized By The NBA: "This Is What You Must Do To Fall In Line"

Kyrie Irving is dominating yet another NBA season in the headlines but it's not because he has been putting in MVP-level performances for a championship-bound Brooklyn Nets team. Instead, it's because of another off-the-court scandal that is keeping him away from actually playing NBA games as the Nets struggle to win regular-season games.

Kyrie shared an anti-semitic movie on Twitter and then refused to explicitly apologize for that until he was suspended by the Brooklyn Nets. He's been asked to fulfill 6 conditions by the team before he returns, something that musician and TV host Nick Cannon compared to slavery and called dehumanizing while talking to Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. 

Nick Cannon: "I can wholeheartedly say I know Kyrie Irving is not anti-Semitic."

Jonathan Greenblatt: "When given the chance to say, 'Are you anti-semitic or not,' he didn’t say, 'No I’m not anti-semitic. At the press conference, tell us about that movie. While he did, he said, 'stop dehumanizing me.' And the movie is saying White Jews invented the holocaust and 6 million Jews didn’t get killed. OK, I know that isn’t right because there’s a gigantic historical record. Jewish people know, when you dehumanize us this way, we know what’s around the corner."

Nick Cannon: "So in that same statement as, 'Those are the tropes that dehumanize Jewish people,' the same buck-breaking..."

He was then cut short by Greenblatt and asked to define the term "buck-breaking."

"The slave masters would bring the buck, the one that gets out of line, so all the other slaves would see, lash after lash, show them the power to set an example," Cannon explained. "This is what you must do to fall in line. So, when we see the six things that Kyrie must do to get his job back, that’s dehumanizing." (h/t XXL)

The Anti-Defamation League recently declined to accept a $500,000 donation from Irving, but the player is expected to speak to them again if he wants to return to the Nets.  

Kyrie Irving's Future In The NBA

All these events outside of basketball keep coming back to haunt Irving's NBA career. The star point guard is among the best in the world with his skills but is always tripping up on political statements that keep him away from actually being on the court. Even the Los Angeles Lakers, who were widely expected to be the only team willing to offer Irving a contract next season, are having second thoughts about getting him.

The Nets have no reason to extend his contract after they failed to agree on a deal in the summer and Irving has actively hurt his market value further through this latest controversy surrounding him.