Kyrie Irving missed much of this season due to the vaccine mandate in New York City. Irving refused to get the vaccine against COVID-19, and as a result, he wasn’t allowed to play games at the Barclays Center. Eventually, this mandate was lifted and Kyrie promptly made his return to the court.
Despite all of this, Irving still believes he was wronged in a way. During an episode of The ETCs Podcast with Eddie Gonzalez, Irving spoke about the mandates and everything he went through. Shockingly, Irving even went so far as to compare himself to an actual martyr.
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“I was not expecting a mandate to be brought down in a way where it wasn’t going to let me play at all,” Irving said. “I had the opportunity to play away games still but there was no plan in place, there was no vision of how it was going to work for our team. And I think that not only impacted not just me, but a lot of people. Just had to sit in that hot seat for a little bit and deal with it. The life of a martyr, bro.”
The Brooklyn Nets superstar also spoke on the difficulties of starting his season so late into the year. As you can imagine, there were a ton of growing pains that came with such a predicament. “I had to play catch-up,” Irving said. “And playing catch-up in a league that’s only getting better, it’s not the position you’d like to be in.”
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Now, the Nets will four months to figure everything out before next season. If Ben Simmons comes back, perhaps this Nets squad will actually have a chance at making it past the first and second rounds.
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