NBA Says No COVID-19 Vaccination Mandate For New Season
After some high-profile vaccine-related absences from basketball last season, the NBA says they will not have a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for players in 2022-2023 campaign.
The league will “strongly suggest” team personnel stay up-to-date with vaccinations. Discussions between the league and the NBA Players Association remain ongoing about whether unvaccinated players will be subject to periodic COVID-19 testing during the upcoming season.
Last season, the NBA did not require that all players be vaccinated against COVID-19, but unvaccinated players or players who did not receive a booster dose were subject to certain protocols, such as game-day testing. Players were also held accountable for mandates from states with their own vaccination requirements.
While the NBA said 95 percent of its players were vaccinated heading into last season, one of the players refused to take the vaccine.
The Brooklyn Nets’ Kyrie Irving refused to be vaccinated and missed the first three months of the season. Even when Irving returned to basketball on January 5th, he could only play in road games because of local vaccine mandates in New York.
Irving finally played his first home game on March 27th, but the Nets were eventually knocked out from the first-round of the playoffs by the Boston Celtics.
Another player who was not vaccinated was the Philadelphia 76ers’ Matisse Thybulle, who had to miss three games of his team’s first-round playoff series against the Toronto Raptors.
While a majority of the most stringent COVID-19 rules and mandates have been lifted throughout the United States, Canada still requires all persons entering the country to have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Chidi Nwoke/Reuters.
