Kyrie Irving is a basketball wizard Irving step back three Kyrie Irving it's like he plays a game within a game Irving again ooing eyes from the crowd manages to get the ball back putting on his show with a ball handing layup is good as if he plays hide and seek with Defenders always shielding the ball from their grasp Now You See Me Now you don't or it's like the ballet where he makes other players tap dance around him only to break their ankles one crossover later oh no oh no but what makes Kyrie's handle so
slippery and so deadly what drills did he do to perfect his dribbling and why can nobody block Irving's shot despite him standing at just 6'3 he got the stuff that will embarrass you right Kyrie got that stuff that make you go home and cry to your M well Irving was born left-handed but because he attended a strict Catholic School teachers forbade him from doing things with his naturally stronger hand and forced him to do everything with his right hand I was getting slapped on the hand for writing with my left hand I never knew yeah
I was a whole school this was in '96 you were left-handed at first absolutely by being ridiculously Orthodox teachers did Kyrie the biggest favor because he was soon able to do everything ambidextrously did you do you write left yeah I could do both are you both sides of my brain are unlocked if you're asking the second big help was that Kyrie's father was a former basketball player drk Irving was a hoop star at Boston University and once had a triy out with the Boston Celtics after which he played pro basketball in Australia but more importantly
dror instilled a love for basketball in Kyrie which became his obsession in fourth grade I wrote on my wall in the closet I will play in the NBA I promise Kyrie Kyrie loved hooping more than anything and he was practicing with his pops all the time and at first those practices weren't anything fancy he just perfected simple moves crossovers between the legs behind the back but he repeated them thousands of times and then he would work on combinations of those moves and counter moves and chain them together by the 8th grade Kyrie realized that what
he could do with the basketball was unique and that nobody could handle the rock like he did and his Godfather agreed with that Irving's Godfather is Rod Strickland a former NBA player and one of the best passers of the 9s when Strickland saw Irving dribble in the backyard he told drri this boy is going to make you some money but Kyrie's road to the NBA wasn't all so straightforward Kyrie was a small kid and as a High School freshman he was only 5'7 skinny and shot the ball from his hip he also played for Montclair
Kimberly Academy in the lowest division of the state and without a single player on the roster taller than 6'1 so despite Irving growing to 5' 10 as a sophomore and averaging 29 points per game nobody knew who he was however that only made him work even harder and seeking more exposure for Kyrie his father hooked him up with local aaou Coach Sandy ponin who was famous for working with NBA players ponin put Irving through some pretty bizarre drills like hopping in different directions while dribbling leftand skyhooks from the free throw line and full court one-on-one
but when Kyrie transferred to St Patrick high school he was still quite small with a disproportionate head so they started calling him squirrel boy but as soon as squirrel boys started playing he embarrassed everybody with his handles cuz nobody could stay in front of him and soon enough colleges started noticing Kyrie he wasn't playing with the best team in New Jersey but he was single-handedly killing all these teams Duke Coach Mike shashki then after averaging 24 points five rebounds and seven assists per game as a senior Kyrie enrolled at Duke unfortunately due to a severe
ligament injury in his foot Irving played just 11 games at Duke however that was enough for everybody to see that this kid was the most talented young player in the world on top of his silky dribbling and Fred a stair footwork Irving shot 50 40 990 in college and nobody was surprised when the Cavaliers selected him with the first overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft but despite fulfilling his lifelong dream of making the NBA and becoming a millionaire Kyrie wasn't satisfied and he never stopped working immediately after the draft he reached out to a
famous trainer Michael Lancaster who has gyms all over the US and has worked with many famous NBA players most notably Dwayne Wade even though Irving became a self-made ball handling artist it was his work with Lancaster that pushed him into a new Stratosphere Lancaster wanted Irving to be a little more ambidextrous with not only his dribble but with how he protects the ball with his off hand what C is one of the only people he'll let you play he'd rather play defense on offense he's defending the ball and keeping the ball away from you he
picks he starts his point of attack and he lets you dictate how this is going to go yep Lancaster made Kyrie keep his dribble so tight that he could SWAT away opponent's hands like flies while he handled the basketball but that was just one of the things they worked on what Lancaster really improved with Kyrie was not his hands but his feet a lot of times players slow down from 60 MPH first to 40 then to 20 then to 10 and then finally zero but after one workout Kyrie was able to go from 60 to
zero I think that's what really separates him not only his hands but his feet are incredible to the point where he can stop on a dime and change directions like a running back Lancaster it's not his handle though it's Kai's footwork with his handle drop hesy drop hesy twe twen Hy pool his emergency breaks one of the biggest secrets about Kyrie's God handles is not something you can see on TV but you'll feel it if you ever have a chance to meet him and shake his hand he's got really strong hands when he shakes your
hand you know it Brad Stevens I've contested some of Kyrie's jump shots and we've locked hands and that hit nothing but neck that strength allows Irving to keep the ball on a string despite Defenders repeatedly prying at it not even somebody like kawh Leonard can poke it away from Kyrie Irving drives inside shot is good Irving averages just 2.6 turnovers per game in his career which is astonishing for a high usage point guard for example Harden averages 3.7 turnovers per game Westbrook is at 4.1 and even Steph Curry another guy with phenomenal handles turns the
ball over more than three times per game but strong hands and protecting the ball with his off hand are just a part of the reason why he's rarely turning the ball over another big aspect of that is Kyrie's extremely low center of gravity when he's dribbling Kai is so poised and balanced that even Michael Jackson wouldn't be mad at this Smooth Criminal and another big thing about Kyrie is his rhythm Kyrie's feet are always moving and the timing between his step and his dribble is always in order allowing him to make reactionary moves without losing
control like a drummer or a ballroom dancer it's almost impossible to knock Irving out of rhythm and that's why he can change Pace whenever he pleases but how did Kyrie achieve this surgical Precision he used a specific drill that he copied from three-time All-Star point guard Baron Davis after watching a documentary about Davis Irving learned that tying a plastic bag around his basketball could take his ball handling skills to the next level inside the bag the ball becomes very slippery which makes maintaining the grip and maneuvering the ball a lot tougher the bag also cuts
the amount of bounce the ball has which made Irving develop more strength in his wrists and forearms he also learned how to dribble the ball with just one finger at a time to strengthen his fingers but that's not all another unusual dribbling drill that helped Kyrie develop dribbling and Rhythm was dribbling two balls at the same time he does very simple in and out left right behind the back dribbles but he does it with both hands and two balls and everything is synchronized like he's a conductor in front of a big Orchestra and lastly what
makes Kyrie's handle so vicious is his overall game if he wasn't such a deadly shooter and if he didn't have high basketball IQ his dribbling wouldn't be so devastating because his Defenders would just sag off him and let him shoot while his highlights look like one of his Infamous Uncle Drew commercials Kyrie's offense is actually very simple and he tries to take shots after one or two dribbles what I want fans to realize is that when I make a move it's really a simple move it's just done with pace and it's done off a counter
of something I only do those fancy moves when someone cuts me off and makes me do it because I have counters to every move that I do Kyrie and when you watch the tape on Kyrie you quickly realize that that his words are true and that there isn't much pattern in how he dribbles the ball he simply reacts to what the defense gives him Irving doesn't know what he's going to do and this unpredictability makes him unguardable he changes speeds to keep people off balance perhaps the best way to put it into words he has
an uncanny ability to go one way stop on a dime right to left left to right whichever and still be on balance and get by you it's unpredictable you just don't know which way he's going Steph Curry and Kyrie three over step in 2016 might be the most famous play but it's not the nastiest that Baseline move that I hit on Steph head fake jab he fake jab drop drop it again and Shake You spin it I spun it I dropped it and caught it with my left hand spun and then I faded and saw
KD on the Baseline but Kyrie is not just the best ball handler in NBA history he might also have the craftiest layup package ever Irving working on Thomas gets around him up under an in oh what a move for when he was a little kid he played on a basket with a broken backboard with pieces missing and that's where he learned to put extra spin on the ball what y'all don't get to see is him explain to you that he grew up playing on a rim that was missing pieces on the backboard so that's how
he learned those weird angles to twist the ball off of cuz his backboard was missing pieces was missing that's crazy also because he was usually one of the smallest players in every game Kyrie learned to Shield the ball with his body and find little spots to get the ball off the glass while preventing the players from blocking his shots he doesn't practice typical things that other guys practice when he shoots layups as part of a practice he'll mix in the degree of difficulty that's way harder from everybody else former coach Brad Stevens because Kyrie is
ambidextrous and because he can jump off either leg he can finish in more ways than any other player in the NBA and that's why he almost never gets his shot blocked he's like Allan Iverson's handles Kobe's footwork and Ray Allen's shooting all in one package Kyrie makes basketball look like art and is without any doubt the greatest ball handler of all time
