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Kyrie Irving's sneakers are a conspiracy den

DJ Dunson
The Kyrie 4s are the Dan Brown novel of signature sneakers. (@kyrieirving / Nike)
The Kyrie 4s are the Dan Brown novel of signature sneakers. (@kyrieirving / Nike)

Coded symbolism in sneaker designs can range from the silly to the serious. On Thursday, Kyrie Irving debuted new new sneakers which were littered with cryptographic symbols. The sole of Irving’s new Kyrie 4 signature shoes feature a confetti colorway, inspired by the Warriors championship confetti that was stuck to the bottom of his shoes after Game 5 of the 2017 NBA Finals.

However, the Kyrie 4 tongue is intriguing because it is another nod to his conspiratorial flat earth convictions. Irving’s status as a flat-earther surfaced before the All-Star break on Richard Jefferson’s Road Trippin’ podcast. Jefferson later attempted to cushion Irving’s comments, however, it didn’t do much to clarify whether Irving believes the Earth is round or not, per SB Nation.

“Kyrie’s whole thing was more of just to open your mind. Don’t just take in information that’s fed to you. Create your own thoughts, create your own ideas,” Jefferson said. “He wanted to put that out there. Don’t just take in the information that you’re told….His whole point was open-minded thinking.”

Since then, Irving has continued Don Quixote’ing this flat-earth theory. He also told UConn Lady Huskies coach Geno Auriemma, “there is no real picture of the Earth.”

Based on his aforementioned comments to Jefferson, his exchange with Auriemma and his insistence on including the “All-Seeing Eye” in his sneaker, you can assume that we aren’t being Punk’d and that Irving still believes the Earth is shaped more like a basketball court than Spalding. However, this “All Seeing Eye” symbolism makes us wonder, what other known, verifiable facts from books, the media and the internet does Irving believe should be questioned?

He’s on to something when to comes to the internet, as long as he doesn’t disrespect Wikipedia. There’s plenty of drivel to be found in the infinite corners of the ‘net. Books and media can be deceptively manipulative if they rely on untrustworthy sources, which is why it’s important to choose your sources of information rather than reflexively believing everything (such as Stephen A. Smith free agency rumors) you hear or embracing anti-intellectualism and “fake news.”

However, that may be Irving’s problem. He’s unwittingly the one being fed misinformation, but due to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, he believes the majority of the population are the sheep. With all that said, those are some nice sneakers.

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DJ Dunson is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at dunsnchecksin@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or Facebook.