So Much For The Nets’ Principles…
So much for standing on principle.
The Nets, who in advance of this season took great pains in effectively banning Kyrie Irving from all team activities until he opted to get the COVID-19 vaccine, announced on Friday that they are welcoming back their unvaccinated superstar point guard with open arms to play road games only (where allowed by local ordinances).
The whole bit about how a player with part-time status would be antithetical to their culture? Well, that became malleable under the stress of adversity. And what COVID-19 crisis? At a time when New York City and the country are experiencing a spike in cases along with the threat of new mutations, the Nets, who have always gone the extra mile in promoting the jabs, are now patting a practicing anti-vaxxer on the proverbial head by allowing him into their mix.
The reasons for the pivot are obvious. With Irving absent, the Nets’ two other Big 3 members, Kevin Durant and James Harden, have had to play extraordinary minutes for early regular season games. The recent seven-player COVID-19 cluster that included Harden exacerbated the situation, resulting in the Nets riding KD for 87 minutes in order to pull out a pair of wins over Toronto and Philadelphia.
It was not sustainable and Durant in particular pushed for his good friend Irving’s reinstatement to lighten his load, according to reports. The planet’s best player deserves to be heard, but when Nets owner Joseph Tsai relented, it gave the impression that the inmates are running the asylum.
It’s no secret that this is a Championship-or-bust season in Brooklyn and the added dynamism of Irving could be enough to push this roster over the top. The Nets were a KD toenail away from eliminating the eventual champion Bucks in last postseason’s Eastern Conference semifinal and that was with Irving lost for the series after a Game 4 ankle injury and Harden severely hobbled by hamstring woes.
The Nets may be sitting atop the East at 21-8, but I doubt anyone in the organization believed that an Irving-less squad could get through four grueling playoff rounds. With him, they have a chance. He’s that great.
But this way? Irving is still bound by the New York City Executive Orders which subject all City-based performers to a vaccine mandate. That keeps him locked out of Barclays Center as well as the Nets’ two games against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He’s also prohibited from crossing the Canadian border to play against Toronto on March 1. That leaves Irving eligible to play in 24 of Brooklyn’s remaining road games.
Of course, the Nets are not going to just throw Irving out onto the court for their next road game at Portland on Thursday. To reduce the risk of injury to an already injury-prone jewel, Brooklyn’s Performance Team will have a ramp-up program in place.
How long that will take is anybody’s guess, but therein lies the next hurdle. Due to their recent outbreak, the Nets have already cut back on practices and shootarounds, times when Irving could potentially speed up the process by playing with Brooklyn’s “stay-ready group.”
And while those infected players will eventually clear all protocols, there’s the not-so-small matter of the new Order that takes effect on December 27. Whereas the Nets were originally gifted an exception for their HSS practice facility because it was deemed “an office”, the new Order reads like a strict workplace mandate that offers the same exemptions for non NYC-based teams only. I have yet to hear how the Nets plan to get around this one.
Even if there is a workaround, this is troubling given that the simple solution was for Irving to get vaccinated alongside 97% of the league. It’s an unprecedented accommodation for a star player’s untruthful stance regarding a once-in-a-century public health crisis. I would rather the Nets have traded Irving (which I guess is still possible) for 50 cents on the dollar than caving in this manner.
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