NBA commissioner Adam Silver questioned New York City‘s vaccine mandate applying to only home teams. In an interview on ESPN's Get Up on Wednesday, Silver speculated that recently elected Mayor Eric Adams could look into altering the vaccination requirement in the near future.
Silver said that the mandate, which has prevented Nets guard Kyrie Irving, who is unvaccinated against COVID-19, from playing any home games in Brooklyn this season, “doesn‘t make sense” to him. Under the current ordinance, a player on an away team that is unvaccinated against the coronavirus is still eligible to play at Barclays Center and/or Madison Square Garden.
“This law in New York, the oddity to me is that it only applies to home players,” Silver said. “If ultimately that rule is about protecting people in the arena, it just doesn‘t make sense to me that an away player who is unvaccinated can play in Barclays, but the home player can‘t. To me, that‘s a reason they should take a look at that ordinance.”
