The black card labeled player empowerment had its bill returned with a red mark on it for the first time in nearly a decade after increasingly testing the limits of what can be expressed or exposed.
Kyrie Irving played a long game of chicken with the Brooklyn Nets, and the Nets called his bluff in a move that displayed an organizational backbone, telling Irving in a statement and with an actual voice his presence will not be determined by his schedule, but theirs.
Either that or Kevin Durant played Jack Nicholson's part and ordered the code red.