Nets' Kyrie Irving Turned Down 4-Year, $100M Contract Over Vaccination 'Ultimatum'

Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving told the press Monday that he passed on a $100 million, four-year contract because the team included an ultimatum to get vaccinated for the coronavirus.

“I gave up four years, 100-and-something million deciding to be unvaccinated, and that was the decision,” Irving said Monday, according to ESPN. “[Get this] contract, get vaccinated or be unvaccinated, and there’s a level of uncertainty of your future, whether you’re going to be in this league, whether you’re going to be on this team, so I had to deal with that real-life circumstance of losing my job for this decision.”

Irving added that he considered the vax demand like an “ultimatum” in the contract. Get vaccinated, or no contract.

He added that the COVID outbreak and its resulting rules threw a wrench in his negotiations.

“We were supposed to have all that figured out before training camp last year,” Irving added. “And it just didn’t happen because of the status of me being vaccinated, unvaccinated. So, I understood their point, and I just had to live with it. It was a tough pill to swallow, honestly.”

Nets GM Sean Marks demurred from Irving’s characterization that the contract’s vax demand was an “ultimatum.”

“There’s no ultimatum being given here,” Marks said. “Again, it goes back to you want people who are reliable, people who are here and accountable. All of us: staff, players, coaches, you name it. It’s not giving somebody an ultimatum to get a vaccine. That’s a completely personal choice. I stand by Kyrie. I think if he wants, he’s made that choice. That’s his prerogative completely.”

Marks added that the main issue was that the City of New York put rules that barred athletes from entering any city sports facility unless they were vaxed.

“So, two summers ago, that was pre-citywide, statewide mandates that went in,” Marks told the media. “So, once the vaccine mandates came in, and we knew how that would affect [Irving] playing home games, and so forth, that’s when contract talks stalled. So, it didn’t get to [a point], ‘Here’s the deal, now take it back.’ That never happened.”

Still, despite the breakdown in negotiations, he feels confident that Irving intends to remain a part of the Nets and is not looking to go elsewhere.

Still, Irving concluded by noting that the vaccine issue was something “bigger” than himself, an issue of personal freedom he wasn’t willing to give up.

“I understood all the Nets’ points,” Irving explained. “And I respected it and I honored it, and I didn’t appreciate how me being vaccinated, all of a sudden, came to be a stigma within my career that I don’t want to play, or I’m willing to give up everything to be a voice for the voiceless. And which I will stand on here and say that, that wasn’t the only intent that I had, was to be the voice of the voiceless, it was to stand on something that was going to be bigger than myself.”

Irving has been a persistent anti-vaccine voice. Only a week ago, Irving insisted on Twitter that the COVID vaccine mandates have been the “biggest violations of human rights in history.”

Also, in March, he urged people who oppose the vaccine to “stand together” in opposition to the mandates.

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