WaPo | Kyrie Irving is a thrillingly talented basketball player, a former Rookie of the Year, a seven-time All-Star and a gold medalist for Team USA. But I look forward to not watching him work his magic this season — as long as he refuses to do the right thing and get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
This isn’t the first time Irving has courted controversy. But the skepticism he and other holdouts have propagated and the wishy-washy stances even some of their vaccinated colleagues have taken, are worth addressing seriously — and not just for what they say about the fight against the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The best way to show respect for athletes as political actors and philanthropists is to push back when they’re wrong — especially when the stakes are this high.
Irving plays for the Brooklyn Nets, and the city of New York mandates that Nets players be vaccinated before they can play in their home arenas. Irving is the only stubbornly unvaccinated Net. Since he would have to sit out roughly half the team’s schedule, Nets management has wisely decided it’s best he not play at all.
A performative iconoclast, Irving posted an I’m-the-victim justification on Instagram Live. “It’s bigger than the game,” he said. “I came into the season thinking I was just going to be able to play ball. . . . Why are you putting it on me?”
Cue the violins.
I don’t respect his “choice” at all. As for why we’re “putting it on” him, we are battling together to defeat a highly infectious virus that has killed more than 720,000 Americans. We have a trio of safe and effective vaccines that slow the spread of the virus and confer miraculous protection against serious illness and death. Irving’s choice threatens not just his own health but also, should he be infected, that of his fellow players, his coaches and trainers, the referees who call the games, and the fans who come to see the Nets play.
Irving clearly understands the privileges that come with his stardom, including the ability to get millions of people to listen to whatever he has to say. A few years ago, he drew worldwide attention by claiming, with a straight face, that he believed the world is flat. “I do research on both sides,” he said in 2017. “I’m not against anyone that thinks the Earth is round. I’m not against anyone that thinks it’s flat. I just love hearing the debate.”
He later apologized. “At the time, I was, like, huge into conspiracies,” he said. “And everybody’s been there.”
That’s precisely the problem. Far too many Americans are “huge into conspiracies,” and it is deeply irresponsible for famous athletes to encourage them to go down the anti-vaccine rabbit hole.
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