The new anti-vax talking point goes something like this: It’s hypocritical not to let Kyrie Irving play ball because he won’t get the coronavirus vaccine when Magic Johnson played in the NBA when he had HIV.
Many people, from radio host Clay Travis to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, and failed congressional candidate Lavern Spicer, among others, repeated some version of this statement.
It’s ridiculous for many reasons.
The NBA does not have a vaccine mandate. New York City has a vaccine mandate; it requires people to have at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine to go to bars, go to restaurants, and use indoor gyms, among other things. Basketball courts fall under that indoor gym category.
Irving wanted to be a part-time player to get around the mandate. Irving’s team, the Brooklyn Nets, said it won’t allow that. This makes sense because it would use a roster spot on someone who can’t play in more than half of the team’s games this season. What good is that?
If people aren’t happy, their problem is not with the NBA, and it’s not with the Nets; it’s with the New York City government. The government created the vaccine mandate, not the Nets.
Meanwhile, the NBA doesn’t ban someone from playing with HIV because there is not much risk of getting HIV in a game. When someone bleeds, the game stops, and trainers try to rectify the situation. HIV largely spreads through unprotected sexual acts and sharing needles. Fortunately, those things don’t happen in NBA games, so Johnson didn’t give the other players HIV when he came back to the league after retiring.
Meanwhile, the coronavirus spreads through respiratory droplets (and to a lesser extent touch), so there is a greater risk of transmission during an indoor sporting event. Testing isn’t perfect, and the unvaccinated are more likely both to contract and spread the virus, so there is a bigger risk there.
The NBA has many problems. Its teams play in taxpayer-funded stadiums and push booze and gambling onto the masses. The league is soft on China, has a lot of people who make divisive statements, and pretends to be woke. However, criticizing the NBA over a vaccine mandate it didn’t implement and a team in a tough situation is not a fair attack. Let’s stick to the real reasons to critique the NBA.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
