Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash confirmed on Sunday he is preparing for the reality that Kyrie Irving, as an unvaccinated player, will not be able to play in any of the team’s home games this season.
“I think we recognize he’s not playing home games,” Nash told reporters. “We’re going to have to for sure play without him this year. So it just depends on when, where and how much.”
Due to municipal public health guidelines in Brooklyn, Irving being unvaccinated bars him from entering spaces like arenas, making it impossible for him to play in the Nets’ 41 home games. Given the fluidity of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a chance those mandates could change over the course of the season, but there is no indication at this time from city officials that such a development is likely.
A ruling on Friday by the city deemed the Nets’ practice facility a private office and not subject to New York’s vaccine mandates, dispelling the initial concern that Irving would not just miss home games, but would be unable to practice with the team either.
There had been optimism, according to earlier reporting by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, that Irving would get vaccinated and fulfill these local mandates. But, with the team unaware of his ultimate intentions regarding the vaccine, that hope was waning and the Nets were grappling with whether the team would accommodate Irving as a part-time player.
For each game that Irving misses due to being unvaccinated, the 29-year-old is slated to lose just over $380,000, in accordance with an agreement that was struck between the league and players’ union for how to navigate this novel situation.
If Irving were to miss all 41 Nets regular season home games, he would forfeit around $15.6 million of his $35.2 million contract.
At least 95 per cent of the league is believed to be vaccinated. Despite this, and the overwhelming evidence that vaccines reduce both the spread of the virus and the likelihood an individual will suffer severely adverse effects if they do contract COVID-19, Irving — who is also a vice president on the NBA Players’ Association’s executive committee — has been one of a vocal minority of players who have espoused a range of anti-vaccine sentiments.
The NBA players’ union has not yet agreed to a vaccine mandate and has denied the league’s proposals for one to be implemented. The referees’ union, however, has agreed to one. In the WNBA, 99 per cent of players were fully vaccinated by June without a mandate going into effect.
When recently asked about his vaccination status during the Nets’ media day, which he was unable to attend in person due to the vaccine protocols, Irving said on Instagram Live that he’d “like to keep that stuff private” and insisted “the last thing” he wanted to create was “more hoopla and more distractions.”
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