Earlier last month (Nov. 4), NBA all-star Kyrie Irving initially had his lengthy Nike contract suspended by the widely-used footwear manufacturing company themselves. The corporation publicly claimed that their reasons stemmed from a previous viral situation, in which the Brooklyn Nets athlete shared questionable antisemitic content to his millions of followers on a majority of his verified social media platforms — “At Nike, we believe there is no place for hate speech and we condemn any form of antisemitism… To that end, we have made the decision to suspend our relationship with Kyrie Irving effective immediately and will no longer launch the Kyrie 8,” the multinational business model stated.
Most recently, the Beaverton, Oregon-based company publicly announced the indefinite termination of their eight-year-long professional relationship with the 30-year-old basketball player. The abrupt news was officially announced to the public this past Monday, December 5, 2022, by Irving’s current financial agent Shetellia Riley Irving: “We have mutually decided to part ways and wish Nike the best in their future endeavors,” she stated in an exclusive interview.
With this specific information being made known to everyone around the world, Irving having a newly pronounced title as a ‘sneaker free agent,’ and presently withholding one of the most popular and widely-bought basketball shoes throughout the NBA, most fans feel as if it is only a matter of time before the young influencer moves on to bigger and better things.