



Kyrie Irving regrets saying that the Earth is flat at All-Star Weekend in New Orleans in 2017. The distinction is different because it doesn’t appear that he regrets thinking it when he was “really into conspiracy theories” back then, but he does regret saying it out loud and the kerfuffle that followed.

Irving spoke at the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Boston on Monday and was asked about advocating for Flat Earth Theory more than a year ago back when he was a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. The quote became the talk of All-Star Weekend, which was equal parts hilarious and horrifying in a world where the truth was quickly being devalued and society seemed to be losing its grip on science and facts.

That grip, and the impending sense of doom for the oblate spheroid we call Earth, has only increased in the time since then. Irving was traded to the Celtics and has been asked about Flat Earth Theory many times since then. He’s tried to backtrack and Galaxy Brain his way out of the incident without acknowledging what he actually meant. But on Monday, finally, he issued an apology for throwing hundreds of years of science in the garbage a few blocks from Bourbon Street.

Kyrie apologizes for saying the world is flat. #Under30Summit pic.twitter.com/uJH3fNbPqS — Nicole Yang (@nicolecyang) October 1, 2018

“Hopefully after this I’m done answering it,” Irving said before concluding that “people are going to ask me regardless.”

Irving wasn’t bothered by the question, though, and he does actually poke fun at himself a bit in explaining that he was “huge into conspiracies at the time.”

“Everybody’s been there, like ‘Yoooo, what’s going on in our world?’” he continued, making the crowd laugh even more. “You click a YouTube link and you see how deep the rabbit hole goes. You start telling all your friends ‘Yo, did you see that? Watch this video.’”