New York City mayor-elect Eric Adams had said previously, “We need to revisit how we are going to address the vaccine mandates” when talking about the mandates for police officers, firefighters, and other city employees. That sparked some hope that the city would change its overall vaccine mandate for public indoor spaces, which would allow the unvaccinated Kyrie Irving to start playing for the Nets again.
Nets fans can forget about that. Here’s what Adams said on CNN today, via Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News:
“New York City’s not going to change their rule. And again, it’s up to the NBA and Kyrie to come to a full understanding on how to keep him on the Nets and continue to look after all our athletes that are coming here...
“This is something that the NBA – if they want to perform in the city – this is the agreement they made. So I believe it’s up to the NBA and Kyrie to come to an understanding about how they want to get through this. And I believe they can come to a resolution.”
This throws the decision back on Irving, who had some convoluted logic as to why he was not getting vaccinated, but once Irving does something where he feels he is in the right he is slow (at best) to change his mind. Missing the entire season would cost him more than $16 million in home game checks because he is unvaccinated, but that is not changing his mind (the Nets are still paying him for road games, where he technically could play, but they told him he would not be part of the team until he was fully eligible).
For now, unless Irving chooses to get vaccinated — as a reminder, vaccines are largely safe and make people less likely to contract, spread, or be hospitalized by the coronavirus — he will not be playing for the Nets.
Brooklyn has won three in a row as James Harden has started to round into regular season form, and the team is 5-3 on the season but now heads out on a six-game road trip.
