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Kevin Durant tells Donovan McNabb to ‘relax’ after Kyrie Irving comment

Maybe Donovan McNabb should just stick to football.

Former Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb (left) was brushed back on Twitter by Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant over comments about teammate Kyrie Irving.
Former Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb (left) was brushed back on Twitter by Brooklyn Nets superstar Kevin Durant over comments about teammate Kyrie Irving.Read moreAP Photos

Maybe Donovan McNabb should stick to football.

The former Eagles quarterback turned NFL analyst weighed in on a report that Brooklyn Nets superstar Kyrie Irving’s behavior was an “unspoken concern that makes Nets officials queasy.”

ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan reported Monday that Irving “shuts down” due to his dramatic mood swings and at times is unwilling to communicate with his coaches and teammates. MacMullan added that there is hope that Kevin Durant, who also signed with the Nets in the off-season but is out with an Achilles injury, “will be able to coax his friend into a better frame of mind.”

McNabb, in an apparent attempt to throw shade at former teammate Terrell Owens, wrote on Twitter Tuesday night that Durant would’ve been better off remaining with the Golden State Warriors, adding, “Boy I’ve seen this happen before."

McNabb’s tweet caught Durant’s eye, who offered a simple, two-word response to the former Eagles quarterback.

For what it’s worth, Nets head coach Kenny Atkinson denied the report, calling it “completely false” and “absolutely not true.” And Durant told ESPN that Irving is “an artist” who sometimes has to be left alone.

“You know what he’ll bring to the table every night because he cares so much about the game,” Irving said.

The Sixers’ first game against the Nets this season takes place in Brooklyn on Dec. 15. It’s unclear if McNabb will be on hand.

ESPN proclaims Eagles losers at the trade deadline

In the end, the Eagles didn’t do much.

As the 4 p.m. trade deadline came and went on Tuesday, the Eagles and general manager Howie Roseman stood pat. The Birds’ sole addition was defensive end Genard Avery, whom they acquired from the Cleveland Browns on Monday for a fourth-round pick in the 2021 draft.

Not surprisingly, ESPN ranked the Eagles as one of the losers at the trade deadline. Here’s how NFL insider Dan Graziano summed things up:

No help for the beleaguered secondary. No help for the defensive line. Philly’s schedule also gets a lot easier from here, and the team believes a roster it thought was excellent before the season can be excellent once everyone gets healthy.

Eleven of the NFL’s 32 teams didn’t make any trades ahead of the deadline, and just five made multiple deals. According to Jeff McLane, the Eagles were involved in talks for several players, but “Roseman likely deemed the asking prices as too high.”

Les Bowen wrote that Roseman might have learned from last season, when he gave up a third-round draft pick to nab wide receiver Golden Tate, who didn’t add much to the offense and left for the Giants during the off-season.

Quick Hits

• The Eagles weren’t thrilled about being selected to appear on Amazon’s next installment of All Or Nothing. “There has to be somebody on the show,’’ Eagles president Don Smolenski told my colleague Paul Domowitch. “And if there are no volunteers, then the league makes a selection."

• This week, ESPN mercifully nixed the musical segments that plagued Monday Night Football’s halftime coverage, opting instead for a more traditional show featuring a breakdown of the game and news from NFL Insider Adam Schefter. The Eagles’ sole Monday Night Football game this season is a Dec. 9 match-up against the New York Giants at the Linc.

• On Tuesday, Deadspin was in the news after its longest-serving employee (and Temple alum) Barry Petchesky was fired for not sticking to G/O Media’s edict to “stick to sports.” But popular writer Diana Moskovitz also announced Tuesday that she’s walking away from the troubled website, and explained her decision on Twitter: “What happened today — and everything that preceded it — are among the reasons I decided to move on.”

• Sony informed subscribers Tuesday that it will shut down its “skinny bundle” Playstation Vue in January. Launched in 2015, Playstation Vue was a sports-friendly alternative to an expensive cable subscription, but one quirk that bothered subscribers in Philadelphia was the omission of NBC Sports Philadelphia+, which airs games when they’re bumped from the network’s main channel.