CHICAGO - Under the backdrop of a ravaging pandemic and a slew of yawning pre-season games, a "word war" is brewing in the NBA.
This one is weird, though, because it's missing the key ingredient.
Words.
Kyrie Irving, the mercurial point guard of the Brooklyn Nets, has decided to boycott the media in this upcoming 2020-21 season, issuing a statement that said "my goal is to let my work on and off the court speak for itself."
He's been fined $25,000 so far. The NBA insists Irving does some talking on a microphone in front of reporters.

Irving is a different cat, one who once insisted the world was flat, so I won't even pretend to know what on earth he's thinking.
People have lost lives fighting for their freedom of speech yet here is one celebrity athlete choosing to mute his megaphone and wasting the opportunity of a powerful voice making a difference in the crusade for social justice.
If this $25,000 fine will also be levied in each of the upcoming season's 72-game calendar, Irving stands to lose $1.8 million in penalties.
But don't expect that pile of cash to make Irving move his lips and become as loquacious as a drunk. His 2020-21 salary is $462,904.167 a game.
Per Marc Stein of The New York Times, it took Mark Cuban 20 years and two months of owning the Dallas Mavericks to accumulate "publicly-known" fines wort $3.1 million as of March this year.
Irving could potentially get halfway there in just one season in Brooklyn.
I don't really give a damn if Irving refuses to talk to us in the media, "pawns" as he alluded to. It's his money, his lips.
What isn't his, though, is the choice where his fines go.
"I pray we utilize the "fine money" for the marginalized communities in need," Irving said via Instagram.
Nope.
Doesn't work that way. The NBA has assigned charities that will benefit from this and Irving will have no say where to and how much.

To allow Irving to dictate where his fines are directed will mean tolerating, enabling a wrong because something good somehow justifies it.
That's not how things roll in this round universe.
The six-time All-Star can brainwash himself into believing that he is championing a worthy cause. But I won't be fooled.
The only cause here is Kyrie Irving.
And I can't attach any sort of nobility or martyrdom to a player who blatantly defies a contractually-obligated function in his contract.
Irving must understand that his insane salary is paid through billions of broadcast rights dollars from the very same media he refuses to engage.
HOW SILLY IS THAT.
For now, Irving's hiccup is a harmless murmur but when the games become more meaningful, the silence will ring louder and will morph into a huge headache for the NBA and a distraction for the Nets.
And because the money obviously won't make the delightful Kyrie budge, maybe a suspension will, a move that will definitely raise hell over at the NBA Players Association.
"The Brooklyn Nets will be fun to watch this season," said former PBA commissioner Noli Eala in a tweet.
He's right. Up until Kyrie Irving blows things up.
Lest we forget, there are still embers from the bridges he burned in Cleveland and Boston.
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