NBA star doesn’t back down on his claim the Earth is flat

One of my favorite exchanges from “Seinfeld” is when Jerry and George are discussing their favorite explorers.

George likes DeSoto because he discovered the Mississippi River. Jerry is Magellan fan.

“My favorite explorer. Around the world, come on,” Jerry says.

Well, Cleveland Cavaliers star Kyrie Irving doesn’t think Magellan made it around the world. More like from one end to the other. As in flat.

A couple of other Cavaliers players — Channing Frye and Richard Jefferson — have a podcast called “Road Tripping with R.J. and Channing.” Irving was a guest recently and the talk turned to aliens.

After an interesting bit of discussion (ex-girlfriends who are aliens and science based on the movie “Armageddon”), Irving asked, “Do you think the Earth is round?”

Frye and Jefferson said yes, but Irving disagreed.

“No, the Earth is flat,” Irving said.

“Anything that you have a particular question on ... is the Earth round or flat, I think you need to do research on it,” Irving added.

Later in the chat, Irving was asked again if he thinks the world is flat and Irving said: “For what I’ve known for as many years, and what I’ve been taught is that the Earth is round. But I mean, if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move and the fact that can you really think of us rotating around the sun and all planets aligned? ...”

Irving said that probes sent by NASA never return.

“There is no concrete information except for the information that they are giving us,” Irving said. “They are particularly putting you in a direction of what to believe and what not to believe. The truth is right there and you just got to go search for it. I’ve been searching for it for a while.”

That caused a bit of a stir on Friday, and Irving was asked about his view of the world again by ESPN’s Arash Markazi later that day. Irving did not back down.