NEW ORLEANS _ For the record, Fox Sports Ohio's Allie Clifton sounded as incredulous as the rest of us when Kyrie Irving repeatedly insisted the Earth is flat.
That's the belief the 24-year-old Cavaliers guard stated during a Feb. 17 "Road Trippin' with RJ and Channing" podcast posted on cavs.com that sent the Twitter world into a frenzy Friday.
The conversation also touched on conspiracy theories, the existence of aliens, John F. Kennedy's assassination, Bob Marley and bad hamburgers.
"The earth is flat," Irving said during the podcast. "All these things that particular groups, I won't even pinpoint one group, that they almost offer up as education. The fact that in our lifetimes that there are so many holes and so many pockets in our history ... All these things that they keep giving to us, all the explanations, I'm just saying that these things that used to put me in fear, it makes you not want to question it naturally because of how much information you can figure out and how much information is out there. Anything you have a particular question on, is the Earth flat or round, I think you need to do research on it."
When asked "who" has the answer, Irving said, "It's right in front of our faces. They lie to us."
Frye tried to get Irving to recant by asking him again, "Do you belief the Earth is round or flat?"
Irving responded, "For what I've known for many years, what I've been taught is that the Earth is round. If you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move, can you really think of us rotating around the sun and all planets aligned rotating and in specific dates being perpendicular ...
"There's no concrete information except for the information they're giving us. They're pointing you in the direction of what to believe and what not to believe. The truth is right there, you've just got to go searching for it. I've been searching for it for a while."
Arash Markazi, a senior writer for ESPN.com, caught up with Irving Friday night in New Orleans and pressed him on his belief.
"I think people should do their own research and hopefully they'll either back my belief or they'll throw it in the water," Irving said on Markazi's video. "But I think it's interesting for people to find out."
Markazi asked Irving if he'd seen pictures of the Earth from space and Irving said he had.
"I've seen a lot of things that my educational system has said that was real and turned out to be completely fake," Irving said on the video. "I don't mind going against the grain in terms of my thoughts and what I believe in."
