Kyrie Irving has opened up about why he turned down a 4-year $100M-plus extension prior to the 2021-22 season. According to him, he wasn’t ready to be vaccinated and had to reject the juicy offer via ESPN;
“I gave up four years, 100-and-something million deciding to be unvaccinated and that was the decision,” Irving said during Nets media day on Monday. “[Get this] contract, get vaccinated or be unvaccinated and there’s a level of uncertainty of your future, whether you’re going to be in this league, whether you’re going to be on this team, so I had to deal with that real-life circumstance of losing my job for this decision.” Irving, who is not vaccinated against COVID-19 and was forced to miss home games in Brooklyn until late March because of a New York City vaccination mandate, opted into the final year of his contract, a player option worth $36.5 million, prior to the season. The 30-year-old said he felt the decision whether to get vaccinated was like “an ultimatum” from the organization, in regard to his contract.
Irving said he was hopeful that he would have the contract terms set prior to last season.
“We were supposed to have all that figured out before training camp last year,” Irving said. “And it just didn’t happen because of the status of me being vaccinated, unvaccinated. So, I understood their point and I just had to live with it. It was a tough pill to swallow, honestly.” For his part, Nets GM Sean Marks pushed back on the notion that Irving was given an “ultimatum” regarding his contract.
“There’s no ultimatum being given here,” Marks said. “Again, it goes back to you want people who are reliable, people who are here, and accountable. All of us: staff, players, coaches, you name it. It’s not giving somebody an ultimatum to get a vaccine. That’s a completely personal choice. I stand by Kyrie. I think if he wants, he’s made that choice. That’s his prerogative completely.” Marks acknowledged that it was ultimately New York City’s vaccination mandate, coupled with Irving’s anti-vaccination decision, that stalled conversations about the future.
“So two summers ago, that was pre-citywide, statewide mandates that went in,” Marks said. “So once the vaccine mandates came in, and we knew how that would affect [Irving] playing home games and so forth, that’s when contract talks stalled. So it didn’t get to [a point], ‘Here’s the deal, now take it back.’ That never happened.” Marks said that while contract discussions about Irving’s future broke down again this summer, he is confident that Irving is fully committed to being a Net moving forward.
“At the end of the day, we’re happy that Kyrie is back here,” Marks said. “I’m listening to the press conference he had this morning and my takeaway from that is that he’s committed. He understands that in order for him to be a free agent and get what he rightfully wants, he’s going to have to show commitment out there. We’re happy to support him in any possible way throughout the season to make sure that he’s healthy and ready to go.” Irving said that while he understood where the organization was coming from after the season, he was frustrated by the fact that his decision not to get vaccinated “came to be a stigma within my career.”
“I understood all the Nets’ points,” Irving said. “And I respected it and I honored it, and I didn’t appreciate how me being vaccinated, all of a sudden, came to be a stigma within my career that I don’t want to play, or I’m willing to give up everything to be a voice for the voiceless. And which I will stand on here and say that, that wasn’t the only intent that I had, was to be the voice of the voiceless, it was to stand on something that was going to be bigger than myself.”And I was going to understand probably far into the future … there was a level of uncertainty of what this was going to look like of me coming back. And I had questions, they were answered truthfully. And that’s all I needed. And now it’s just having the support around me and giving the support to my teammates.”
Kyrie has made a lot of money in his career I am sure he will be fine and be able to recoup the $100 million in the next three years. He is getting paid $36 million this year, so he is almost a third of the way to recouping.
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