It’s not about the vaccine. Of course, the vaccine seemed as the reason Kyrie Irving was the NBA’s most polarizing player this season. He refused to get the shot (s) recommended by the scientific community and New York City required of staff, which kept him from playing most of the Nets’ home games this year, and he became part of our national screaming game: He should get the vaccine, everyone should get the vaccine, he does not need to get the vaccine if he does not want it, some of these vaccine rules do not make sense, whatever has happened to freedom, etc., etc. But lots of athletes have turned down the vaccine. Irving drives people wild because of what he did to his team.
In the summer of 2019, Irving signed a four-year, $ 136 million contract with Nets. In the three seasons since, he has played in only 103 of his team’s 226 matches – partly due to an injury, but mostly due to his own choices. Before the vaccine question, he took leave without any explanation. Nets coach Steve Nash said he did not know where Irving was, and general manager Sean Marks said he was “disappointed” Irving was “not in the trenches with us.” Irving later said it was a family affair. He also violated the league’s health and safety protocols. He seems to be proud of having other priorities than the public expects of professional athletes, to the point where one wonders if his priorities are not as important to him as being different.
Now he’s here, heading into the postseason play-in tournament as one of the NBA’s most exciting players. However, the Nets have not really looked like a team all year. James Harden came and went. Ben Simmons came and did not play. Still, the Nets are a dangerous 7-seed in the tournament, and that raises an uncomfortable question: If Kyrie Irving and the Nets somehow turn it on in the spring and win a championship, what does that say about the league?
The NBA is a strange place right now. It undeniably thrives as a business and cultural entity, but as a competitive sport it has gone astray.
In Michael Jordan’s last five seasons, he played a total of 82 games four times – not because he was superhuman, but because that was what the players did. In 2002-03, 46 players played all 82 matches (including Jordan, who turned 40 that year and then retired forever). It was just the task: If you could play, you did it.
Commissioner Adam Silver recently said he looks at “a tendency for star players not to participate in a complete set of games,” but that’s an old tune. Five years ago, he called stars sitting “an extremely important issue for our league.” He is not much closer to a solution now than he was then. A tournament of the season would be fun and might motivate players to play more, but they would probably rest before and after it. Leading team leaders have concluded that it is more important for players to be healthy and well-rested than to have home-court advantages. Leaders of losing teams would rather be terrible with young players than – oh, the horror! – try to put their best team on the floor.
At these prices, fans should expect a team to try. And in the long run, they is samples. They just do not necessarily try the night you show up with your kids.
Irving has obviously not created the environment where players skip games for reasons that have nothing to do with health. But the NBA is now a league where healthy players often sit out, sometimes for a long time despite making lots of money. The Rockets paid healthy former All-Star John Wall more than $ 44 million for not playing this year because he does not fit into their long-term plans. Everything Irving has done in Brooklyn, he did in a league where it’s part of the culture to skip games.
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This generation of basketball has also been defined by player movement, which is an offshoot of the player’s empowerment, which is a product of star players realizing that even though they are technically employees, the teams really work for them. When LeBron James jumped from Cleveland to Miami to Cleveland to Los Angeles, he did so as a team owner looking for a better stadium deal: LeBron James Inc. signed a four-year lease on South Beach, and then its CEO decided to relocate offices.
But when James does, he always does it with basketball as a priority. So does Kevin Durant. James went to Miami to win his first title, to Cleveland to win there, to Los Angeles, at least in part, because there was no clear path to win more in Cleveland. Durant joined a Golden State team that won 73 matches, won two titles there and then traveled to prove he could win another place.
Kyrie? He played in three finals in a row, had the best player in the world on his team and demanded a trade-off. He was traded to a Boston team that should have been on the rise, said he would stay there, and then frolic to play with Durant for Brooklyn. It seemed like a move to win, but it’s pretty clear now that it was not quite that. Throughout her career, Irving has been searching for something different.
“He’s not your average jock, is he?” says former New Jersey Gov. Richard Codey, who trained Irving briefly when Irving was younger and stays in touch with him. “You know, some of the things he says are not what you expect, are they? And so what? It does not make him a bad person.”
It does not. Codey says Irving is conscious of defining himself solely as a basketball player: “He knows, ‘I have to start looking at the day when I’m not playing in the NBA. What am I going to do with my life?'”
Thinking about life after basketball… refusing to see yourself as just an athlete… using your platform for philanthropy and social justice… it’s all great. However, the Nets signed him to a $ 136 million basketball contract and expected him to play basketball.
It seems reasonable to think that a high-paying professional athlete should show up for work on a regular basis, but Irving struggles with the idea that we should primarily see him as a professional athlete, and he does not seem so worried about being paid high. He lost his salary for home games, as part of an agreement between the NBA and the Players’ Association that covers players who do not comply with local vaccine mandates. His lack of availability over the last three years should put teams on guard when he hits free agency again. (When the Nets decided to sit with him in every game, they kept paying him for the road games he would have played.)
Since Irving does not seem to be preoccupied with what we think he should worry about, it is easy to assume that he would be just as happy to lose weight early and have a free summer to see if he can find the end of the earth. But maybe because he does not need basketball, Irving can play at an incredibly high level in pressured situations.
We’ve never really seen what Irving could do with Durant and Harden, and we still have not seen what he can do with Durant and Simmons. But we saw what he did to James. There were many times in the last few years where Irving did not seem so interested in his team. He did some things that would never have worked in the NBA 20 years ago or in the NFL today. His team held on to him anyway. It may turn out to be worth it for them. But what is the price for the league?
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