Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant joined the Brooklyn Nets in the hopes that one day down the road, they’d be able to play together and lead their new team to a championship together.
Year 1 was a wash, but it was known well in advance that it would be. Durant had a ruptured Achilles, suffered in the 2019 NBA Finals, so 2019-20 would be an Irving-only year. 2020-21 was the year where the Big Plans were expected to go into effect when Durant was able to get back on the floor.
The Brooklyn Nets hoped to have their Big 3 fully intact for the start of the season, but Kyrie Irving may be poised to throw those plans off track.
Big Plans did indeed go into effect and the Nets pulled off a blockbuster four-team deal to acquire James Harden from the Houston Rockets. The Big 2 became one of the most dynamic Big 3s the NBA has ever seen, and it looked like the Nets might mount a legitimate run at a championship.
Of course, both Irving and Harden got hurt in the playoffs, short-circuiting their coronation. Injuries are a fact of life in the NBA, a mere act of God and whim of fate that can kill your hopes both in the short and the long terms. The Brooklyn Nets currently find themselves in a crisis of availability, though, and unlike injuries of years past, this one is a self-made one.
Thanks to local requirements in New York (as well as San Francisco), all players based there will have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to play in games. These rules cover the New York Knicks, the Brooklyn Nets and the Golden State Warriors. The Brooklyn Nets have a healthy roster, but it looks like it will not be an intact one as Kyrie Irving appears to remain reluctant to get vaccinated in the midst of a global pandemic going into its second full year.
This means that these Nets may go into their third season without having all of their key cogs available. Set aside the wisdom or lack thereof that his vaccine hesitance suggests. Forget whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing to remain unvaccinated in spite of public health requirements.
From a sheer competitive perspective, the Nets are facing down the possibility that they may have to play all of their home games and their road games against the New York Knicks without Irving if he continues to refuse vaccination.
So let’s imagine a world where Irving ends up playing 40 games and misses the 42 home and Knick road games. There will be games when Kevin Durant sits, leaving James Harden and a hard-working skeleton crew to do battle against the league’s best teams. Harden isn’t getting any younger or more durable either, for that matter, which suggests there is a non-zero chance the Nets will play games with none of the Big 3 even dressed.
There’s no minimum timetable for these local restrictions to be lifted, either. Kyrie Irving may find himself sitting at home watching playoff games, hoping that his superstar teammates can keep a series alive so he can help them win games on the road.
Maybe the Nets can win a championship without him. James Harden and Kevin Durant are good enough that they don’t need a whole lot of help to beat any team in the NBA on any night. Maybe Irving will drop it all and suddenly show up ready for the season, having been vaccinated all along and just trying to teach the world a very necessary lesson of his choosing through this charade.
Who knows?
The frustrating thing is, that’s always the question with Kyrie Irving.