The week-long drama surrounding Kyrie Irving's social media posts linking to an antisemitic film finally came to a head Thursday. The Brooklyn Nets announced they would suspend Irving for at least five games without pay. Irving issued an apology on Instagram hours later, to which general manager Sean Marks said he must do more.

The suspension comes after the fourth-year Net's repeated refusal to apologize for the posts. Reports have indicated Nets owner Joe Tsai resisted early calls for a suspension, insisting on taking time to educate Irving on antisemitism.

“Over the last several days, we have made repeated attempts to work with Kyrie Irving to help him understand the harm and danger of his words and actions, which began with him publicizing a film containing deeply disturbing antisemitic hate,” Brooklyn said in a statement. “We believed that taking the path of education in this challenging situation would be the right one and thought that we had made progress with our joint commitment to eradicating hate and intolerance.”

A recent report from ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Ramona Shelburne said these attempts included several text messages from Tsai to Irving, which the Brooklyn guard repeatedly ignored.

“For nearly a week, Tsai kept extending the clock to give Irving a chance to get this right for himself, the franchise and the Jewish community — and Irving never returned a single of his text messages,” the report said.

This marks the third consecutive season the Nets find themselves enthralled in a media circus with Irving at the forefront. The guard took a pair of extended absences during the 2020-21 season, leaving the team and media to speculate on his whereabouts. Brooklyn was then forced to suspend Irving indefinitely last season while he refused to comply with New York’s workplace vaccine mandate. All of this led to the Nets’ refusal to offer the seven-time All-Star a fully-guaranteed, long-term contract this offseason.

Brooklyn granted Irving permission to seek a sign-and-trade destination this summer. Following two seasons of unpredictability, not a single team emerged willing to offer the guard a long-term commitment. He ultimately opted into the final year of his deal with the Nets. The team hoped this realization would lead to greater dependability from Irving in what would be a contract season.

Yet here we are, less than 10 games in, and Brooklyn has suspended Kyrie Irving for the second-straight year. Irving's last game before the suspension, a 108-99 loss to the Chicago Bulls, was one of the worst of his career. The guard scored four points on 2 of 12 shooting, finishing a team-worst -14 in 33 minutes. The loss marked the first time in Irving’s career he scored less than five points in a game while playing over 24 minutes.

Irving looked unengaged and disinterested in the loss, something Brooklyn found “disturbing” according to ESPN's Zach Lowe.

“I can tell you that around the Nets, Kyrie Irving’s completely checked out performance against the Bulls was very noticed and very disturbing to them along with, obviously, the comments,” Lowe said on his podcast Friday.

Wojnarowski and Shelburne's report echoed a similar sentiment, saying Irving had been distant from the team in the days leading up to the loss.

“Irving had become an albatross around his team, too. He had played a listless game Tuesday in a loss to the Chicago Bulls, leaving his teammates and opponents to privately describe him as disengaged and seemingly ‘in another world,'” the report said. “For a player averaging 30 points and shooting at almost every opportunity, Irving didn't make a basket until the fourth quarter. He had been distant to everyone in recent days, sources said, his presence feeling like an anvil hanging over everyone.”

Irving came off as unremorseful and frankly, annoyed, during his disaster of a press conference Thursday prior to his suspension. The 30-year-old's decision to finally apologize signals he has at least some interest in salvaging his NBA career. Had he not, Irving would have played his last game in a Nets uniform, and likely the NBA.

Marks called Irving's apology “a step” when addressing the media Friday. However, the general manager said the guard must take further action before he can return to the team.

“There is going to be some remedial steps and measures that will be in place for Kyrie Irving to obviously seek some counseling, from dealing with some anti-hate and some Jewish leaders within our community,” Marks said. “He’s going to have to sit down with them, he’s going to have to sit down with the organization after this. And we'll evaluate and see if this is the right opportunity to bring him back.”

The “if” in that last sentence looms large for Irving's fate in Brooklyn this season. It is one thing to sit back and take time to write an apology off the heels of a suspension. It is another to maintain composure and share that same sentiment when questioned by the media, whom Irving has repeatedly accused of attempting to push a “label” on him.

He may take these steps and return to Brooklyn this year. However, for a Nets team that put the onus on Kyrie Irving to prove his worth after refusing to offer him a long-term commitment this summer, you could not have scripted a worse start to the season.

Brooklyn now finds itself in disarray at 2-6 on the year. The team fired head coach Steve Nash and reportedly plans to replace him with suspended Celtics head coach Ime Udoka. Ben Simmons, the Nets supposed third star, has looked like a shell of himself while recovering from back surgery and will now miss his third and fourth straight games while dealing with knee soreness. Wojnarowski reported Friday that Simmons, who is averaging 6.2 points on just 5.7 shots per game, has been “a source of frustration” for Kevin Durant and others through the team's early struggles.

And to top it all off, it is unclear when Irving will return to the lineup.

Irving came to Brooklyn alongside Durant four years ago with hopes of bringing the franchise its first-ever NBA championship. Instead, he has missed more games than he has played, a large chunk of which were and continue to be self-inflicted. His tenure with the team has been marred by off-court drama and severely underwhelming on-court results.

If Brooklyn was unsure of their appetite for a long-term commitment with Kyrie Irving this summer, the opening two weeks of this season gave them their answer. And following Irving's litany of off-court issues over the last three seasons, the rest of the league will have reached the same conclusion.