Damian Lillard Wholeheartedly Agrees With Kyrie Irving’s Hilarious Take On Coaching After Retirement

Prateek Singh | 04/11/2024
Damian Lillard (L), Kyrie Irving (R).

The retirement talks have already started for Kyrie Irving. Last month, he was asked by a reporter about his plans after he hung up his boots. Most great players aim to take up a coaching job so they can share their decades of invaluable basketball knowledge with the next generation. However, Kyrie has no intention of going down that route.

A week after he commented, Damian Lillard stumbled upon it on the internet and reshared the clip. Dame agreed with what Kai had to say about coaching after retirement and how it doesn’t fit well with the personality he has and how he looks at things. The Mavericks star was asked, “Are you gonna be a coach once you retire?”

Kyrie said, “Yeah, I don’t know if I’m a coach at this level, man. I’m more like consultant-type. Like, I make my own hours. If you know my personality, you know I’m not trying to be forced to do anything. So you telling me I got to show up at 9 AM, I’m like, maybe like 9:08 or something like that…I think once I’m done, I’ll definitely have one of the best [youth] academies of all time.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted)


He stated that he’d rather focus on training youngsters, helping them develop skills, and focusing on their mental, physical, and emotional growth. The Bucks star gave his word of approval to Kyrie’s take. He reposted the clip on his IG story with the caption, “Type sh*t.”

Both point guards can offer a lot to the next generation if they make up their minds about coaching. While it’s a definite no from Kyrie for now, Dame is still likely to take up the responsibility in the future. Based on what we’ve seen from him, he’ll be brilliant at it.

Lillard taught kids the importance of body language

Despite agreeing with Kyrie’s take on coaching after retirement, Dame has shown that he has great insights to share with the next generation. In a clip from his camp, uploaded on YouTube by A Coach’s Diary, he can be seen giving body language lessons to youngsters. Dame explained how it helps maintain a positive outlook for the game and teammates.

He said, “For college players and high school players, it was just like your body language. When you miss a shot, when you throw the ball away, one of your teammates throw a bad pass, or somebody miss you, it wasn’t overly or excessively bad. It’s just the fact that y’all gotta learn to not be emotional about every single play that happened.”

The coaching job might not be completely written off for Kyrie as well. During his stint with the Nets, he talked about how Steve Nash’s tenure would be more of a collaborative effort. “I don’t really see us having a head coach. KD could be a head coach, I could be a head coach [some days],” he said on KD’s podcast.

Maybe someday, Kyrie would like to reevaluate his stance on coaching and decide to take on this challenge later in life.

Post Edited By: Sameen Nawathe
Damian Lillard kyrie irving

About the author

Avatar photo

Prateek Singh

Prateek is a Senior NBA Writer for The SportsRush. He has over 900 published articles under his name. Prateek merged his passion for writing and his love for the sport of basketball to make a career out of it. Other than basketball, he is also an ardent follower of the UFC and soccer. Apart from the world of sports, he has followed hip-hop religiously and often writes about the origins, evolution, and the biggest stars of the music genre.

Don’t miss these