Kyrie Irving is one of the best guards in the league, and his skill set as a three-level scorer and his insane handles seem made to “wow” the crowd. There is no question that he’d be an upgrade for most teams at the point guard position, and that a lot of teams would love to have him if the question was strictly basketball.
While he’s certainly a great player, an area of concern about Irving for the 2021-22 season has been about his availability. It has previously been reported by Yaron Weitzman that Kyrie Irving hasn’t taken any vaccine shots for COVID-19, and the electric point guard refused to discuss his vaccination status stating that he’d like to “keep that stuff private”. Due to laws in the city of New York, Kyrie Irving could potentially have to miss home games if he doesn’t get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Per Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated, Kyrie Irving’s trade value is “virtually zero”. Mannix reveals that teams don’t want to “give up anything of value” for Kyrie Irving due to his $35 million contract and his unpredictability.
If Kyrie says “look, I’m not getting the vaccine, I’ll play in road games”, what do the Nets do here? I don’t think they will suspend him… They can’t really trade him. I was asking around a couple of teams, just for their opinion on the trade value of Kyrie Irving: it’s virtually zero. I mean, he makes $35 million this year, and he’s as unpredictable as you get so why would you give up anything of value to get him back in return? The Nets just gotta be crossing their fingers right now, hoping Durant and whoever else has influence over Kyrie in that organization gets through to him before Oct 8.
It remains to be seen what the Brooklyn Nets will do about this situation, but it seems as though they have limited options. After this report, trading him seems out of the question, and it has previously been reported that Irving would retire from the NBA if he was ever traded by the Nets.
While missing one of their stars for home games would certainly not be an ideal situation, there is still some time left ahead of the season. Hopefully, the team figures out a solution to this issue, and perhaps we will still end up seeing Kyrie Irving suit up for home games next season.
