To open, what follows is very strongly pro-vaccine. If that’s not your jam, I’d argue it should be. I suggest you read this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, or this first. This is an article about an issue in sports and the NBA, that is tangential to a much larger American issue.
The weekend leading up to NBA Media Days, the discussion wasn’t about dunks, three-pointers, or player movement. Instead of the game and the upcoming season, much of the discussion was on whether or not NBA players were vaccinated. Specifically, a report from Matt Sullivan detailed that the roughly 10-percent of NBA Players that are unvaccinated are leading a movement into conspiracy theories. The allegations of these conversations range from outright group texting about conspiracies to liking fictional information on social media. Moreso than any other topic in the past, the COVID vaccine dominated the conversation. More than 90-percent of NBA players, coaches, and personnel are vaccinated, but the conversation was entirely focused on the less than 10-percent that are not.
While the focus on a vocal minority who gets their information from social media is a very American way to start media day, it also was oddly pertinent.
In San Francisco, the home city of the Golden State Warriors, and New York, the home of both the Knicks and Nets, indoor performers have to be vaccinated. Unless the Nets want to play their games at Prospect Park, that means all basketball players on the Nets have to have the vaccine to play their 41 home games. After the FDA approved the COVID vaccine in August, these kinds of measures are only going to become more common across the country.
When news surfaces that Kyrie Irving, a key member of the Brooklyn Nets “big three,” or Andrew Wiggins, a starting small forward for the Warriors looking to get back to title contention, are not vaccinated, it means more for those teams than it would others. Assuming the present situation holds, Irving and Wiggins would be unable to play more often than they are able to play. It feels like every title for a decade has been influenced by health and availability, and these guys are unavailable for the majority of the year.
Irving and Wiggins bore the brunt of the discussion to start the week, but they aren’t alone. Bradley Beal, an All-Star guard for the Washington Wizards, also said he is not vaccinated. He said he understood the vaccine helps reduce the likelihood of going to the hospital, but he won’t get it because “you can still get COVID.” Jonathan Isaac, the young forward for the Orlando Magic, also refuses to get vaccinated because he watched much of what former President Trump had to say and now distrusts Dr. Fauci.
As wild as some of that is, it is still the vast minority of players. Repeatedly, guys like Steph Curry reiterated that having an unvaccinated teammate miss games is “not ideal.” Damian Lillard said he got vaccinated because he has “a lot of people in my family that I spend time around. I’m just not going to put their lives in danger. As a kid, I had to get shots my whole life.”
Multiple teams got out ahead of the situation and opened their press conferences by letting the media know their team was 100-percent vaccinated. Laker Legend and Activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said that the NBA should “remove all unvaccinated players and coaches from their teams… there’s no room for anyone who puts lives at risk,” and added unvaccinated players “refuse to do the necessary research.”
A Big Deal?
On the whole, the NBA is very much behind the vaccine. Its feminine counterpart, the WNBA, has been more than 99-percent vaccinated for months. But to start the week, the unvaccinated basketball players were all anyone could talk about.
Excluding the G League guys with NBA affiliations, the NBA is 450 players. 10-percent unvaccinated would mean that a whopping 45 players still need the jab. In all reality, that’s not a number that should be newsworthy. Vermont leads all states with 69.3-percent vaccinated against COVID-19, and United States sits at just under 65-percent. If anything, the NBA and WNBA being 90 and 99-percent vaccinated, respectfully, ought to be the headline, not the vocal minority.
What this may speak to, as was seen at the start of the NFL season, is a number of players who know they’re replaceable to their teams. Kyrie Irving has the power within the Brooklyn Nets to attempt to bend the rules, he is a star player and (if you follow Matt Sullivan’s reporting) was instrumental in creating the Nets star power as we know it today. But does Cam Thomas have the same power? Almost certainly not.
That is why this conversation looms. Folks are giving some power to Irving, Beal, Isaac, and Wiggins because they’re important enough to not get cut over their stance on the vaccine. Yet.
New York City and San Francisco have local vaccination requirements for Nets, Knicks and Warriors players to play in home games. https://t.co/YNUOCDIQnH
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 29, 2021
Suddenly, players who remain unvaccinated in markets with these rules in place stands to lose millions. Kyrie Irving, in just subtracting games played in New York City (41 home games, 2 “road” games vs. Knicks), will lose $18.7 Million by choosing to remain unvaccinated. Andrew Wiggins would lose almost $15.8 M. Beal would lose $17.25 Million on home games alone if DC puts in the same measure.
For a free shot, that is an awfully expensive decision.
Ultimately, hitting people in the pocketbooks may be what moves the needle. This defacto fine could help get the NBA closer to the WNBA’s 99+ -percent. Every WNBA salary added together comes out to just over $16 Million, which is less money than any of these stars stands to lose.
The threat of it, before the initial announcement, is undoubtedly what did it for many players on smaller contracts. The minimum salary for an NBA player who is on a team the entire year is $925K. If your hometown decides to pass the requirements for indoor performers? You’re out at least $462K. You could be down into the $300K range with simple mandates for other teams nearby. That’s without accounting for whatever Toronto and Canada decide to do, considering they are treating the Coronavirus completely differently from the United States.
90% is an A for the NBA
In many ways, basketball is why America took the pandemic so seriously. The virus was in the United States, but American shutdowns became commonplace following Rudy Gobert testing positive in March of 2020. His case shut down the NBA, and before the end of the month much of the United States had followed. Now, the league can do the same thing with vaccination rates.
It’s not that 90-percent isn’t spectacular. That is far better than any state or city on its own. But the focus has been very much on the lone wolves who aren’t vaccinated, much like when the focus was on the one NBA player who was positive.
Since then sports fans have seen a full year of pandemic protocols and empty arenas. Toronto was forced to play in America, in a season full of road games, just to have their season. And as the 2021 – 22 sports schedule has gotten underway? We’ve mentioned the WNBA Season began with a vaccination rate of 99-percent. But the MLB? Midsummer, well before the vaccine was FDA approved, the MLB was over 85-percent vaccinated. The NFL? Seen as the “conservative” league, the NFL is currently boasting that the league has a vaccination rate of over 93-percent.
So what does that mean about this 90-percent? Is it actually strong for a “progressive” league? Or is it somewhere inbetween the MLB and NFL? And why are all leagues constantly trying to catch up to the WNBA? If the WNBA and the NBA are so linked, why are they so different?
I stand with Kyrie Irving.
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 29, 2021
I stand with Andrew Wiggins.
I stand with Bradley Beal.
I stand with Jonathan Isaac.#NBA#YourBodyYourChoice https://t.co/kn74nwjVRV
It’s not just one thing. On the one hand, it’s the autonomy NBA players function with that is absent for any other league. These players have built a league where they have more agency, for better or worse, for more than a decade. It’s finances: the NBA contracts are guaranteed exorbitant amounts of money. It is also the benefit of the doubt. The NBA has been on the progressive side of a number of important issues, thus this wasn’t an issue the average fan foresaw coming into the season until last weekend.
Who’d have known Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz, and Kyrie Irving agreed on anything, let alone an aspect of a global pandemic?
One thing is for sure: for whatever reason, a lot of the same people asking NBA players to “shut up and dribble” are very happy to have some Kyrie Irving, Bradley Beal, Jonathan Isaac, and Andrew Wiggins quotes about things other than dribbling to use in their own content and for their message. And that’s probably all there is to know about them and these opinions.
