When Kyrie Irving departed for the NBA after his freshman year, he told his father that he would return to finish his degree.

“Five years,” Irving says with a grin, then pauses. “That’s extremely difficult.”

The five-year clock started ticking the moment NBA commissioner David Stern announced the former Duke point guard was Cleveland’s choice as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2011 draft last June.

“You may interpret it as ambitious, but we’re an education family,” says his father, Drederick, who was in Charlotte on Monday afternoon for the Cavaliers’ game against the Bobcats. “So for Kyrie, a five-year agreement to get his degree, that isn’t anything that’s foreign. He understands that a lot of people in our family, they have their degree, so it’s kind of inevitable for him that he’ll get his.”