NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has stated that Kyrie Irving’s unwillingness to get vaccinated and the decision of the Nets to disallow him to participate is not a League issue. Silver recommended that National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and the NBA reach an agreement to make vaccination mandatory for each player to gain more clarity between the league and its players.
Adam also expressed that having an individual opinion is a different matter than playing in the NBA as the law of cities like New York have been ultimately rendered supreme in such tussles between the authorities and players.
I would have preferred that ultimately that the players' association agreed to mandatory vaccinations. The officials union agreed to mandatory vaccinations, despite opposition from some of their members. But ultimately, I think we could have avoided a lot of the adversarial nature of these issues for our players. It's not so much with the league. I think that gets confused in some cases. This is between Irving and New York City right now. This is not a league issue. But I think it would have been best for everyone if every player were vaccinated. I think that gets lost sometimes, that having an opinion about whether to get vaccinated is different than your right to play NBA basketball. We're seeing that, for example, in the New York market right now, when there's a conflict with a player's point of view and the local law, and the local law is going to trump that player's point of view.
Adam Silver, Commissioner, NBA