I dunno I dislike Kyrie for how things went down here and some of the dumb stuff he says but the guy has literally put his money where his mouth is when it comes to charity and helping people. He may be narcissistic and a horses ass when he speaks sometimes but in no way is he a shitty human being.
That's a fair statement, but remember that everything is degrees. For some people, simply lying to/misleading others makes you a shitty person. He knows he is despised for the way he left Boston, the way he quit on the team on court, he ducked the booing by not playing when the Nets showed up in Boston. To then use (as Jaylen hinted at) the national conflict of racism to shield oneself from the booing is despicable. He isn't much different from the schmuck in the 80's who tried to blame his own murder of his wife on the black community. They both tried to leverage race relations in the city for their own gain. It's not unreasonable to hold the view IMO, that act makes him a shitty person - YMMV of course.
For a professional athlete, his brand is himself. He personally makes a statement, his brand suffers if his words fail to convey his intent, right? So if he makes a verbal proclamation to Ainge, the fans, about his desire to stay in Boston and then walks away from it, in that moment it's hard to separate his personal character from that of his brand/professional character - they are interwoven in many respects.
Personally, I believe that we as humans in total are rarely what we appear to be in one single moment of our lives, in some cases one phase of our lives. I can recognize that Irving does X, Y, or Z (as you bring up) which seems to indicate that he cares about people and might want to be a good person. But in the end, the sum of his persona/brand/professionalism in Boston leads me to believe his true priorities are himself, and himself alone. I personally wouldn't use the term 'shitty human being', there are tons of people in the world who are self-centered, if that is who they are, so be it. I'm ok with viewing him as a 'schmuck' though, lol.
PS: If you have a $10,000 and you give a homeless person a $100, that is more of a sacrifice than having $100M and donating $1M, right? So I'm glad that he is answering the call to charity and helping people and all - but there is still a context to that as well. I can't think of an analogy that won't be problematic, but my old boss would screw every employee out of a nickel - but made sure to donate a few bucks whenever the pastor came by with a cause. The pastor probably viewed my boss as a decent guy as well, but his approach with money probably wasn't the best indicator of his character.