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Go ahead, this is an opinion post. An opinion, the one below, somewhat unpopular these days. Well, in these times it is not easy to get under the skin of the anti-vaccines, being almost irresistible to use them as a ‘puching ball’, with the added moral superiority that this implies, as well as the intellectual comfort of being on the side of the majority devastating.
If in addition to anti-vaccines you have a flat Earth past, you wear it raw. A lot can be said about Kyrie Irving. Among them I want to highlight two: that it has them well placed and that it is radically consistent with its principles. Of a coherence ‘between said and fact’ that others would like, including many anti-vaccines who preferred to lower their heads before legal, social and political lynching, or even sell off their ideas in order to prioritize their public and financial well-being.
Kyrie Irving, who accumulates in his history so many crossovers on the court as social actions outside of it, he is currently suffering, and with his full consent, the financial punishment that comes with not playing the games with the Brooklyn Nets that he is under contract to do; and he does it at the cost of being faithful to his principles and with his chin held high.
“I know the consequences, and if that means being judged and demonized for my ideas, I will accept it,” Irving said in his day via Instagram Live, answering many of the questions from his followers regarding his firm decision to avoid the puncture .
Congruent and transparent
Kyrie, we like it more we like it less, it’s been like that all his career. Cannon fodder for conspiracy theories and dream guest of Iker Jiménez, the seven-time All-Star and NBA champion in 2016 would add a good handful of pages, if he had it at his fingertips, to the president’s secret book … if at all it really exists.
The ‘ad hominen’ as a source of mockery and a certain healthy joke should begin and end there … but in the era of clickbait, Twitter does not understand borders. Accepting the limits of the debate and not succumbing to the liquor of eristics and demagoguery on social networks is as likely as seeing a lion eating a plate of salad.
Thus, we prefer to plunge into that argumentative mush in which certain fundamental rights collide (ideological freedom, freedom of expression, the right to security, the right to honor and self-image …) and that are weighed against a way or another depending on the character in front of us and their circumstances.
Because yes, Irving will be able to feel devotion to the most controversial side of the scale and hold the most heterodox vision of how to do and / or think things, feeling as out of the picture as Winston Smith in ‘1984’. Perhaps the prejudices of a mind as restless and innocent as his own incite him to go off on the tangent of the socially accepted, and his tendency to a mannerism, sometimes utopian, sometimes dystopian to digest reality, make him the ideal target of the tweeting mob and the columnist without ideas.
Like being an elite athlete may have its advantages –No, Nole? -, the media exposure that this role entails can easily turn against you if you do not commune with the popular heritage and the feelings of your environment … which under the current climate of globalization, covers practically the entire planet.
Beyond money
Although Kyrie has already made enough money in the NBA to eat nothing but lobster until the end of his days, it also costs to keep track of the amount of dollars he has donated to the community in his fight for equality and relief the burdens of the most disadvantaged: 1.5 million to the WNBA players who did not want to participate in the Orlando bubble; more than $ 320,000 to the Feeding America association to feed the homeless in New York City and another $ 200,000 in direct food purchases for the City Harvest organization; the total payment of the university fees of several students without resources for the HBCU (Black Colleges and Universities); $ 200,000 to help combat the initial coronavirus outbreak despite your misgivings about it …
Kyrie Irving says on Instagram that he is partnering with Feeding America and other organizations to help families who are struggling to put meals on the table amid the COVID-19 pandemic. pic.twitter.com/VgRVBvy8kp
— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) March 23, 2020
All these donations do not cease to be, however, more than the icing, the true value of the cake being in its passion and commitment to be at the forefront of movements such as Black Lives Matter or in favor of the Sioux community – their ancestors–… and so on with a myriad of causes that the player has empathized with in the past, understanding them as worthy of being defended as a result of a systemic hierarchical discrimination.
The Brooklyn Lurch
The Nets management, when in 2019 it made its bet on the former Duke with eight NBA seasons already behind him, had to understand that signing Kyrie Irving meant signing the entire character: a future Hall of Famer with a very code of ethics. particular.
For his part, when Irving enlisted with the Brooklyn team, he was aware that more stars were coming, so he had to sacrifice part of the maximum salary he could have earned as the undisputed Ace on almost any team. But like so many others in the last decade, he chose to enter fewer millions into account in favor of increasing the chances of a second ring.
Undisputed All-NBA profile, the point guard He is the 17th highest paid player in 2021/22, and will drop next year as a result of inflation and the excess of contracts signed after his. This in theory, because in practice we already know that he is losing about $ 380,000 for each game in which he does not play for reasons of not wanting to be vaccinated. About $ 16.34 million for the 43 games played in NYC where the laws do not allow playing without being vaccinated (the 41 at Barclays Center plus another two at MSG with the Knicks as opponents).
Added to this was the Nets’ daring decision not to have him in road games, so even though Irving does charge for those games, his engagement competitive became absolutely nil. In the medium term, this decision meant a tremendous collapse in the franchise’s options to win the championship, the only cause that pushed Joseph Tsai to disburse more than one hundred million annually in luxury tax, or the main one that motivated Irving to join. to a project so committed to the cause for such waste.
With that decision, everyone lost, and the course taken by the Nets was justified under the (presumed) inalienable duty of sending a message to the community. A message that, ultimately, ended up placing the right not to be vaccinated at the same level as the right to decent housing.
In short: vaccination or ostracism.
A dichotomy that flirted with extortion and that, as we have seen, has not made Kyrie give up an iota in his principles, even at the risk of going blank all season or even being transferred to another project that did not fit his aspirations. .
And it was then, with perversion waving the flag of citizen protection, when karma first put the Nets between a rock and a hard place. With omicron spreading his nets and players falling into them like flies, Irving went from an expendable luxury to a desperate necessity. If Durant and Harden, along with the rest of the secondary, seemed a sufficient guarantee to lead the team to a successful conclusion, the relentless list of casualties has made Sean Marks and company, irremissibly avert their eyes to their third star in a state of cryogenesis, revealing so the inside of the cake.
A murky interior that reveals that the sanitary principles Irving didn’t play by outside of New York weren’t unshakable; they simply had a different price than what they had wanted to sell us. As soon as they have lost traction on the handle of the frying pan, despotism has revealed its double face. And from this sad hypocrisy two winners can come: Irving and the Nets themselves.
With the entire second round still ahead, Irving has plenty of time to adjust both his body and his head to the board and competitive pace of Steve Nash’s in the regular phase. Although as we saw last night, it is a minor matter. Irving is still Irving and the Big Three is once again the Big Three without asterisks or hot cloths.
First match of @KyrieIrving this season with @BrooklynNets
22 points
4 assists
3 rebounds
3 recoveries pic.twitter.com/3qcV5laZks— NBA Spain (@NBAspain) January 6, 2022
Scabies with taste
That Irving is back, whatever the cause, is good for his teammates, it is good for the Nets as an organization, it is good for the NBA as a company, and it is wonderful for the fan as a lover of good basketball.
In the worst case, the one that he painted as a terrible abnormality, Irving will play half of the playoff games of each series, something that, in my opinion, makes the Nets much more favorite than if the point guard were not in none of them.
At best, the playmaker, back into dynamics, eager for a new title and feeling like an elemental part of the gear, he may even thoroughly review his misgivings and finally find that doctor, that scientist or that trusted voice that makes him see that the vaccine is preferable for the purposes of contagion, or even the mor
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