As a fan of basketball, and a person who is paid to write about sports, the news on Thursday that Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving …
As a fan of basketball, and a person who is paid to write about sports, the news on Thursday that Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving will finally be allowed to play in the city of New York delighted me. Irving is one of the most entertaining players in the game, and his full-time participation certainly will make the Eastern Conference Playoffs more intriguing. But I’m also able to put my love of basketball to the side when a policy allows for the elite of our society to continue to prosper and skirt the rules, while regular folks are forced to make the decision between injecting a vaccine in their body or losing their jobs. For the past several months, Irving has been a part-time player, only allowed to play in Brooklyn’s road games due to New York City’s private sector vaccine mandate. See, Irving is unvaccinated. The ultimate no-no in liberal cities. The rule never made any sense, especially as COVID-19 cases continued to rise in the winter, for both the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike. New York also implemented a wildly bizarre exception that allowed unvaccinated visiting players to compete in the city. On Thursday, NYC Mayor Eric Adams essentially said that the rule was the reason for the exemption, saying that it created an “unfair disadvantage” for players who call New York City home. “Today, I signed emergency Executive Order 62, expanding the performance exemption to private employer mandates,” Adams said on Thursday. “This is about putting New York City-based performance on a level playing field. Day one when I was mayor, I looked at the rule that stated ‘home town players had an unfair disadvantage [to] those who were coming to visit.
