Breaking down the Nets’ no good, very Covid weekend

By Gabe Friedman

So much for the grand return of Kyrie Irving.

In the course of just a few days, the Brooklyn Nets have become the leading symbol of the renewed havoc that Covid is wreaking on the NBA, and the Kyrie Irving situation could make things much worse.

On Friday, the team announced that they would allow Irving—who remains defiantly unvaccinated and therefore unable to play games in Brooklyn because of New York City’s vaccine mandate—to play in road games.

On Saturday, the team promptly put Irving on the NBA’s health and safety protocols list, signaling that he has come in contact with someone with the virus and needs to quarantine and test negative for several days before returning.

The same day, they added another somewhat important player to that list—Kevin Durant, who’s averaging just about 30 points per game as a clear league MVP contender.

That brought the team’s protocols list to a total of 10 players, including other stars James Harden and LaMarcus Aldridge.

The following day, the team got a twisted sort of reprieve: the NBA canceled the Nets’ next two home games, Sunday against the Denver Nuggets and Tuesday against the Washington Wizards, in response to the team’s Covid spike. The shorthanded Nets lost to one of the league’s worst, the Orlando Magic, on Saturday night, showing how dire their situation is. So the cancellations give them a couple of days to breathe.

But that won’t let the team escape the scrutiny surrounding Irving that is sure to build as the Omicron Covid variant rages throughout Brooklyn and beyond.

Irving has already become an anti-vax poster child. In October, hundreds of anti-vaxxers attempted to storm the Barclays Center, chanting “Let Kyrie play.”

He isn’t the league’s only unvaccinated player—earlier this month the NBA said that 97 percent of players were vaccinated and over 60 percent had received booster shots—but he will be reentering a squad already decimated by Covid contamination. What happens if he spreads the virus to other players, like his friend Durant, when he returns?

The Nets appear willing to take the risk.

“Several months ago, we made a decision that was based around what was best for the team,” General Manager Sean Marks told reporters, referring to the team’s decision at the start of the season to bar Irving from playing. “What was best for the team at that point was continuity. And I think we all see that continuity right now over the course of the last week and whatever the future looks like may be out of the window for a while, and we’re going to navigate that as best we can.”

The response has been mixed.

“Nets sacrifice safety and sanity by caving to unvaccinated Kyrie Irving,” writes Vincent Goodwill in Yahoo Sports. In the Daily Beast, Corbin Smith calls the move “pretty stupid” and “irresponsible” but argues that the Nets are also just trying to operate in their business interests in a country without a uniform Covid policy.

ESPN also reports that Irving will obviously have to get back into playing shape, in addition to passing a slew of Covid tests, making the return timetable even more foggy.

When it comes, one thing is certain: expect another viral surge … of media.