Kyrie Irving Continues to be a Problem for his Team and the NBA
The Brooklyn Nets are on the brink of becoming one of the most interesting case studies in recent professional basketball history.
Can one of the top title contenders in the NBA overcome the absence of one of their superstars, one who will voluntarily miss every one of his team’s games and practices, and still lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy?
In an NBA landscape dominated by super teams, the Nets stand above their competition thanks to a roster headlined by three future Hall-of-Famers: guards James Harden and Kyrie Irving, and forward Kevin Durant. Just a few months ago, the Nets came within inches (literally) of advancing to the NBA Finals, despite Harden playing through a significant hamstring injury and Irving on the bench with a bum ankle.
Now, the Nets — currently the betting favorite (+240, per Vegas Insider) to win the 2022 NBA title — are poised to play without Irving. The ankle injury that kept Kyrie out of the bulk of last season’s playoffs has healed. No new ailment has sidelined the seven-time All-Star. Instead, Irving’s steadfast refusal to receive a COVID-19 vaccine will keep Brooklyn’s superstar point guard off the floor and out of every Nets practice this season until the situation is resolved.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio issued a mandate, effective Aug. 16, requiring COVID vaccines for workers in many trades, including professional sports. According to the mandate, anyone in New York City who works in a covered premises —crucially including “professional sports arenas and indoor stadiums” — must be vaccinated.
Irving continues to decline the opportunity to receive any of the three COVID vaccines available to him. When asked why he chooses to abstain from vaccination, Kyrie regularly leans on the personal choice argument and, because it is a personal matter, Irving says he does not have to discuss it.
First of all, in my opinion, Irving knows better. He is not a civilian like you and me. Part of being a professional athlete is subjecting yourself to increased scrutiny and, unfortunately, the absence of privacy associated with seven-figure paychecks and playing a game for a living. Talking about personal choices like this are part of his job, whether he likes it or not.
Second, and more important to the matter at hand, is Kyrie’s social media activity relating to vaccine misinformation. Irving seems to support conspiracy theories that suggest COVID vaccines include microchips that are being implanted in Black Americans by a so-called secret society. This cabal, so says the theory, looks to control Black Americans by connecting them to a central computer system, all in service of “a plan of Satan”. (Irving followed and liked Instagram posts perpetuating this theory that appear to have since been deleted.) Why is Kyrie hand-waving his decision to the public with quotes to reporters about personal decisions when he appears to hold beliefs that go much deeper than that?
Irving is no stranger to controversial opinions. While believing a secret society is trying to connect Black Americans to a super computer seems pretty wild, Irving has a few other, um, unique beliefs:
- Kyrie is, quite famously, a flat-Earther. On a February 2017 episode of the Road Trippin’ podcast, Irving went to great lengths arguing that our planet is flat while not-so-subtly suggesting the idea of a spherical Earth is itself a conspiracy theory.
- Like many Americans, Kyrie does not think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing former president John F. Kennedy. Irving instead believes JFK was assassinated by the United States Federal Reserve because Kennedy was attempting to stop a global bank cartel.
- According to Irving, the United States’ 1969 moon landing was staged. Kyrie posits that the landing could not be real because Neil Armstrong’s boots don’t match those “in the museum.”
- Irving does not believe dinosaurs existed.
- In an appearance on The J.J. Redick Podcast, Irving lent credence to the chemtrail conspiracy theory
- On the same episode of Redick’s podcast, Irving supported arguments made in “Loose Change,” a series of films that support widely debunked conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Believing the Earth is flat, or that dinosaurs did not exist, is ridiculous but harmless, the cause of little more than some amused chuckles and eye rolls. It is red meat for those looking to pile on the Nets guard, and rightfully so. Kyrie brings much of this criticism upon himself.
Irving also unfairly brings criticism upon his team. The narrative surrounding professional sports is so often focused on the team and Irving is tossing the idea by the wayside. Irving may not care about costing Brooklyn a title, but Durant likely does. Harden certainly cares, as he is the only member of the Nets’ “Big Three” without a championship ring. Nets general manager Sean Marks, the man who brought Irving, Durant and Harden to Brooklyn in search of the team’s first NBA title, is heavily invested in the pursuit of a championship season.
Neither the Nets, nor the NBA, need another Kyrie Irving-shaped distraction, as Sean Yoo correctly pointed out earlier this week. The regular season is enough of a slog without one of Brooklyn’s most visible players causing a major distraction before the team so much as dribbles a ball in a meaningful game. And the NBA, like every other major American sports organization, is not in the business of entertaining the negative press Irving is earning.
The Nets do not need Kyrie Irving to be successful. Brooklyn nearly knocked off the reigning NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks in last season’s Eastern Conference Finals with only one of their three stars healthy.
Durant is the best player in the NBA, full stop. Harden is the best isolation scorer on the planet. That alone would be enough to vault the Nets near the top of the Eastern Conference, but KD and The Beard have a bench stacked with veterans hungry for a chip. Brooklyn broke the NBA record for offensive efficiency last season and likely missed out on a title because of Harden’s balky hamstring. Harden is historically healthy — he played at least 62 games in every season until last year — and Durant appears to have shattered expectations after coming back from a torn Achilles tendon, a catastrophic injury for a basketball player to suffer.
The NBA also does not need more distractions from Irving. The league has been at the forefront of player empowerment and social justice change for the last 18 months but has been strangely ineffective in its ability to mobilize COVID vaccinations. Kyrie’s crusade against the vaccine, largely based on nonsensical conspiracy theories, is doing nothing to help the NBA get a foot hold and affect real change on the vaccination front.
Kyrie has been a walking distraction since he entered the league a decade ago, burning bridges and stirring locker rooms in Cleveland, Boston, and now Brooklyn. Irving’s anti-vaccine rhetoric stands to be the most destructive distraction of his pro career, as anti-vax conspiracy theories are reportedly seeping into other locker rooms. As the face of the anti-vaccine movement, Kyrie shoulders all the blame.
None of this is to say Kyrie should be punished for his stance. And although Irving’s career will likely earn him a ticket to the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., Kyrie will likely go down as one of the most controversial and polarizing superstars in NBA history.
