Biography
Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving overcame numerous key injuries to become only the fourth American ever to win an Olympic gold and NBA Championship in the same year. Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1992 to American parents, Irving spent the first two years of his life Down Under while his father Drederick played professional basketball for the Bulleen Boomers. His mother Elizabeth tragically died when Irving was just four, and he was subsequently raised with the help of his aunts back in West Orange, NJ. Irving decided to follow in his father's footsteps in fourth grade and went on to lead both Montclair Kimberley Academy and St. Patrick High School to various titles during his teenage years. After guiding USA to gold at the 2010 FIBA Americas Under-18s Championships, Irving attended Duke University where only injury prevented him from winning the NCAA Freshman of the Year, and was subsequently selected as the number one pick in the 2011 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Irving immediately fulfilled his early promise, picking up the Rising Stars Challenge MVP and the NBA Rookie of the Year, as well as selection to the NBA All-Rookie First Team. A broken right hand and index finger injury kept Irving out of action at the beginning of the 2012-13 season, but he bounced back with impressive performances in the Rising Stars Challenge and his first All-Star Game, while his 41 points tally against the New York Knicks saw him break Michael Jordan's record as the youngest ever NBA player to score more than 40 points at Madison Square Garden. The following season Irving won the All-Star Game MVP after fans voted him to be the Eastern Conference's starting point guard and recorded his first career triple double. After signing a $90m five-year contract extension with the Cavaliers in 2014, Irving teamed up with LeBron James and Kevin Love to form a new 'Big Three.' Following an opening half of the season blighted by injury and poor form, the trio finally began to gel in the second half, winning 34 of their final 43 games to finish the Eastern Conference's No.2 seed, while Irving also scored a career-high 57 points against the San Antonio Spurs, the most against a defending champion since 1962 and the highest ever in a franchise single game in Cavaliers' history. A fractured left kneecap kept Irving out of action for most of the Cavaliers' NBA Finals defeat to Golden State Warriors and the first two months of the following 2015-16 season. But he made up for the disappointment by guiding the Cavaliers to the Eastern Conference Playoffs, and then an NBA Finals rematch where his crucial last-minute three pointer in the final game saw his side become the first ever to bounce back from a 3-1 finals deficit and also end a 52-year championship drought. Having previously won gold with Team USA at the 2014 FIBA World Cup, Irving then added to his international haul with a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
