Kyrie Irving Fires Back at Critics of Party on Yacht "Full of White Women"

On Friday, the above video made the rounds, purporting to show Kyrie Irving on a yacht in Miami partying with a bunch of coeds (i.e. what many of us would do if we were young, single, fabulously wealthy, and had recently lit up the NBA Finals). As Larry Brown Sports pointed out, the video was headlined as a “milk party,” and “full of white women.” The latter aggregated a bunch of tweets along those lines.

Afterwards, Kyrie posted this photo on Instagram, with the caption, “All different shades. ??#Tryadifferentstory #2016WorldChampions“:

Kyrie is not wrong to be dismayed by the narrative. The lone video clip that emerged presumably didn’t show everyone who was on the boat. It also wasn’t clear enough to definitively show or make pronouncements on the racial background of every participant. If Kyrie hadn’t indirectly addressed this, this story would almost assuredly have died over a summer weekend.