Fox Sports 1 “Undisputed” co-host Skip Bayless on Tuesday blasted Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving for his ongoing hesitancy to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Irving’s availability to his team’s home games is in question as a result of New York’s policy requiring athletes to show proof of vaccination to be allowed to enter an arena or stadium. The NBA recently announced that any player who misses games because they are unvaccinated would not be paid.
Bayless called Irving “the ultimate distraction” and said that although he believes the guard has one of the highest IQs in the league, he doesn’t think “his brain is attached to the kind of maturity” of someone about to turn 30 years old.
“If you had given me a list going into this of players that I thought would be the last holdout against getting vaccinated, [Irving] would be at the top,” Bayless outlined. “[H]e is that guy. He is about conspiracy theories … he is world be flat, he is UFOs, he is Illuminati. And I love it that he thinks hard. He’s got, to me, I don’t know what their IQs, but his would be at the top of the list in IQ, but sometimes his brain isn’t attached to the kind of maturity that should be coming along as he’s about to turn 30 years of age — he’s 29.”
“I just feel like Kyrie hasn’t been forced to grow up because he’s been pretty blessed all along. And because he is such a deep thinker, he wants to be the last holdout, and he says, ‘I don’t want to be a distraction,’ yet in the end, he really wants to be the ultimate distraction. He wants the spotlight on him. And right now, he’s got the spotlight completely on him.”
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