Several NBA players have opened up about why they will not, or do not want to, get the COVID vaccine. A lot of the condemnations from media figures sure sound similar to “shut up and dribble.”
The NBA Players Association has rejected vaccine mandates, and several prominent players have said or indicated that they would not get vaccinated. Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal, who has already had COVID, said that it’s a “personal decision” to get vaccinated and that no one should be pressured into it. Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac, who has shown in the past that he is one of the more thoughtful players in the league, said he would not get it because he had natural immunity.
Jonathan Isaac also teed off on the Rolling Stone story that called him anti-vacc. This is great too. Watch it: pic.twitter.com/vkafd5Q3bP
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) September 28, 2021
Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving hasn’t disclosed his vaccination status but reportedly is liking posts from an Instagram conspiracy theorist. Irving would actually be unable to play in all Nets home games (which accounts for half of their season) if he is unvaccinated, thanks to the vaccine mandate put in place by New York City.
The reaction from sports and the liberal media has been sour, to say the least. Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports said that players such as Irving and Beal should be “ignored and ridiculed” and compared them multiple times to former President Donald Trump. CNN’s Chris Cillizza said that these players were using their platforms to “fuel misinformation.”
Former NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar went as far as to call for unvaccinated players to be kicked out of the league. ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt (also a thoughtful individual) noted that NBA players may be making a private decision, but they have a platform to spread concerns about vaccines “regardless of where they might have originated or whether or not they’re rooted in facts.”
Taken in total, these criticisms accuse players of spreading misinformation in a field in which they aren’t experts. Critics are calling on them to be ignored or even punished by the league itself.
Does that sound familiar?
“It’s always unwise to seek political advice from someone who gets paid $100 million a year to bounce a ball,” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham said when responding to NBA star LeBron James criticizing Trump. “Keep the political comments to yourselves. … Shut up and dribble.”
Indeed, NBA players and other athletes have spread misinformation before. They’ve spread misinformation about racism and police shootings, as in the cases of Jacob Blake and Ma’Khia Bryant. The insistence that this is a medical issue and those are political issues that don’t endanger lives doesn’t hold up either, given the riots we saw in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after Blake was shot by police. (Also, statistically, your life is not in danger from an unvaccinated NBA player if you are vaccinated.)
There were some overbearing criticisms of NBA players talking about politics, but those were used to dismiss the most common one: These players don’t know what they’re talking about, and it’s better if they don’t weigh in by contributing their vast ignorance to the conversation. That’s the same line of criticism being used now about vaccines.
The players’ lack of knowledge hasn’t changed, but the politics have. And that’s what this has always been about.
