Kyrie Irving was unavailable by personal choice for a substantial portion of the Brooklyn Nets’ season, and as he was away he couldn’t help but wonder if the Nets would move on.
Because of Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated, he was unable to play games in New York for most of this season. He didn’t appear in road game until Jan. 5, when the Nets finally acquiesced and let him play in games away from Brooklyn.
So, for a little more than two months, there was a lot of uncertainty around Irving. He explained on “The ETCs with Kevin Durant” podcast that he wondered during that time if his next chance to play was going to be on a new team.
“There was nothing to lose,” Irving said. “It was only the journey to enjoy at that point, because I was sitting at home and -- I don’t even want to say sitting at home -- I was wondering at home what my future was going to look like. Whether I was going to be traded, whether I was going to be released, whether I was going to get the opportunity to be on another team, how I was going to spin this for myself in a positive way."
The reality is that trading Irving made no sense for the Nets or opposing teams at that point. Nobody knew if vaccine mandates were going to expand, so the Nets wouldn’t have gotten full trade value for Irving, and a team acquiring him would have needed to worry about not having him available.
Ultimately, New York made an exception for athletes and performers who were unvaccinated, which enabled Irving to play at Barclays Center at the end of the season – which for Brooklyn concluded last week when it was swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Boston Celtics.
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