Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving is refusing to get vaccinated despite the Nets and legacy media bearing down on him. Yet he is somehow holding fast to a more principled stance than most of the athletes that are praised for their activism.
Irving was reported to have some wacky views about vaccination. And yet, according to NBA insider Shams Charania, there is an actual principle behind his refusal to get vaccinated. According to “multiple sources with direct knowledge” of Irving’s decision to remain a holdout, “Irving is not anti-vaccine and … his stance is that he is upset that people are losing their jobs due to vaccine mandates.”
“To him, this is about a grander fight than the one on the court and Irving is challenging a perceived control of society and people’s livelihood, according to sources with knowledge of Irving’s mindset,” Charania writes. “It is a decision that he believes he is capable to make given his current life dynamics. ‘Kyrie wants to be a voice for the voiceless,’ one source said.”
You could say that Irving believes in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
Irving is taking a far more principled stand than what most athletes get praised for. Originally, Irving would have had to miss half of the Nets’ season because of New York City’s vaccine mandate. The Nets decided to take it a step further, saying that Irving will not practice with the team or play in road games until he is fully eligible to play home games as well. But Irving still appears to be holding fast.
Compare that to Colin Kaepernick giving up his mediocre NFL career to get paid millions for being a social justice activist while pretending he wanted to remain a backup quarterback all along. Or the athletes who were praised for delaying their games by a day or two over the death of George Floyd. Or NBA star LeBron James, Irving’s former teammate, who sacrifices nothing but his own dignity whenever he decides to talk about politics.
Irving very well may be misguided, but there is no doubt that he is actually risking his career and legacy for something he believes in. That is more than can be said about the other athletes who obediently spout whatever social justice talking points are popular at the time while collecting millions of dollars in our liberal-dominated culture. Irving is the athlete going against the cultural grain that we are supposed to pretend athletes such as LeBron or Kaepernick are.
