PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — For at least two games of the Sixers’ first-round playoff series against the Toronto Raptors, they are going to be without arguably their best defender, Matisse Thybulle.
Thybulle will be ineligible to play Games 3, 4 and possibly 6 in Toronto because of a Canadian law that mandates travelers are fully vaccinated to enter the country. It became widely presumed that Thybulle didn’t meet these requirements when he was ineligible to play in Toronto last week.
“I’m not fully vaccinated. This was a decision I made a long time ago,” Thybulle said once it became official the 76ers were taking on the Raptors.
He said he tried to keep his decision private, which stems from growing up in a “holistic household.”
“[‘Anti-vax’] is a weird term that is kind of been thrown around to just label people, but we grew up with Chinese medicine and naturopathic doctors, and just with that upbringing, coming into this situation, I felt like I had a solid foundation of medical resources that could serve me beyond what this vaccine could do for me,” he said.
“As this situation has played out, I’ve obviously had to reconsider and look at it differently,” he continued. “It got to the point last year during the playoffs where I did actually consider getting vaccinated and went through with getting the first shot, the first dose, because at that point, I was under the impression that getting vaccinated would mean that I could not get the disease and transmit it to other people.”
As the vaccine was distributed and the COVID-19 pandemic raged on, health officials informed the public that the vaccine prevents severe illness and death from the coronavirus but does not prevent one from getting it all together.
Thybulle said he received one dose of Pfizer last year before deciding to stop his vaccination series.
“It felt like getting vaccinated was not something that I needed to do to protect other people and was something that I would have to do to then protect myself,” he said. “And with that being considered … I felt like I was secure … [by] going to the doctors that I have to treat COVID if I did get it. And in the case that I did, I was able to go about it in my holistic way.”
Thybulle admitted that telling his teammates was difficult, but when he made his decision to not be fully vaccinated, his current situation wasn’t a factor.
“Having had the stance I’ve had for almost a year now, I just felt like it couldn’t be something that I could be forced to do because of rules or regulation changes, and it just seemed like the right thing for me to just see it through,” he added. “Unfortunately, the repercussions of that are going to be me missing games and not being there for my teammates.”
Thybulle is the Sixers’ best wing defender and arguably their best defensive player overall. He has also been a starter for most of the season. The Sixers didn’t fare well against the fifth-seeded Raptors this season, going 1-3. Two of those losses came when Toronto didn’t have All-Star Fred Van Vleet in the lineup.
Thybulle said being forced to miss games wasn’t the outcome he wanted. At the same time, he recognizes the repercussions of his decision.
“I considered deeply all the different avenues and, of course, I’ve accepted that this could hurt money, contracts, reputation, but I felt like this was the right thing that I need to do for myself.”
When asked about the downsides of getting the second dose, Thybulle said his reasoning “wasn’t really the downsides. I just didn’t feel like it would benefit me. I didn’t see any benefits outweighing what I could seek from alternative medicine.”
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