Kyrie Irving, the point guard for the Boston Celtics, is a dazzling basketball player, one of the best in the world. On this, there is very little debate — and certainly not from me, a lifelong Celtics fan. His ability to creatively dribble the basketball is so singular that The Boston Globe found last year that video game makers had trouble duplicating it.
He can handle the ball, but can he act? Irving is about to have a very different skill tested for a mass audience: He is the star of the coming feature film and branding vehicle, “Uncle Drew,” based on a series of viral commercials that Pepsi developed in 2012 and that Irving wrote and directed.