Dear Kyrie Irving and the Unvaccinated, with Love
The 2021–22 American NBA (National Basketball Association) season is starting today. Not starting is Kyrie Irving who plays for the Brooklyn Nets. He will not start because he is not vaccinated against Covid-19 and area regulations require vaccination to play. NBA reports that 95% of its over 400 players are vaccinated. That is just short of the near perfect vaccination rate of 99% for the WNBA (Women’s NBA) which just concluded its season crowning surprise champions Chicago Sky.
Kyrie Irving arguably hit the greatest shot in NBA history when his 3-point shot in the closing seconds of Game 7 of the NBA finals made the Cleveland Cavaliers the NBA champions in 2016. There is no comparable shot to Irving’s because never before had a team come back after being down 1–3 in a seven game series in the NBA finals. The Cavaliers were playing the Golden State Warriors, who were the defending champions and were coming off the best regular season record in the history of the NBA (73–9). Irving’s shot made history against all odds, bringing a professional championship to Cleveland for the first time in 52 years.
Kyrie Irving will go down as one of the best guards ever in the NBA. You can’t not like him. Have you seen his Uncle Drew videos? Irving is a humanist. Born to a mother with Black and Lakota Indian heritage and a dual citizen of America and Australia, Irving describes himself as “being committed to all races and cultures, religions, just having an understanding and respect.” Irving wants to be known for his service. His charitable foundation’s recent contributions include buying a home for the George Floyd family, starting a $1.5M initiative to help WNBA players choosing to miss its 2020 bubble and pay, and food donations to his late mother’s Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and to the city of New York.
Why is Irving and many others not vaccinated? One reason Irving gives is that he is watchful of what goes in his body. He went on a plant-based diet in 2017. I am careful like him, so I understand. With the pandemic, logically the choice of what goes in our body is one of these two: The vaccine or the virus. Unfortunately, neither is not an option. Irving and the unvaccinated may not care about the higher likelihood of contracting the virus, but many who they care about are afraid of getting the virus from the unvaccinated. A strength training coach in the NBA worries about passing on the virus from unvaccinated players to his children. An NBA staff member worries about the aged parents who live with him. Many with such worries may not be able to speak up or quit. Everyone from the immunocompromised to the vaccinated are at risk, to varying degrees, from the unvaccinated.
If not for themselves, it is for people around them that Irving and the other unvaccinated need to get vaccinated. Believing in conspiracy theories, even after hundreds of millions of all races and cultures across the world have been vaccinated, is not enough to put people near and dear or unsuspecting strangers in danger. For the sake of love and life, get vaccinated! Fully.
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