As of late, the vast majority of professional athletes have already been dosed with the COVID-19 vaccine, which means that members of the sports media have taken to following suit by reaching out to the public to try and convince people to get their shots as well.
On the first night of the new NBA season, “Inside the NBA,” hosted on TNT, talked about Kyrie Irving, the point guard for the Brooklyn Nets, and his refusal to get the vaccine which led to Hall Of Famer Charles Barkley chiming in with his opinion on the matter.
“You don’t get the vaccine for yourself, you get it for other people,” claimed Barkley. “I got vaccinated. I can’t wait to get the booster. You don’t get vaccinated just for yourself. Like Adam [Silver] said, you get vaccinated for your family, first,” he added. “You get vaccinated for your teammates second.”
Working side by side with Barkley on “Inside the NBA,” Shaquille O’Neal stated to USA Today back in September that “sometimes have to be selfless” when questioned about a handful of NBA professionals that continued to remain unvaccinated.
“In this line of work, sometimes you have to be selfless,” stated O’Neal. “The day I decided it wasn’t all about me and it’s about us is the day I started winning and really started dominating. I understand the issues and all that. But I took the vaccine because I’m not trying to get my mother sick, or my sister or my brother or people around me. I know people say, ‘The vaccine came too fast and is it healthy.’ To each his own. But sometimes you have to think about the overall picture and you have to think about more than yourself.”
However, Shaq has stated that he is not a fan of forcing people to take the vaccine via a mandate.
As stated in one of the more recent episodes of “The Big Podcast with Shaq.” O’Neal took a stand against vaccine mandates, explaining that people should not be “forced to take something they don’t want.”
The talking point of vaccine mandates cropped up in the wake of co-hosts Nischelle Turner and Anthony “Spice” Adams telling a story about two nurses out in New York who reportedly made $1.5 million in a scam by issuing fake vaccine cards.
“I encourage everybody to be safe and take care of your family,” O’Neal stated. “I do, but there’s still some people who don’t want to take it. And you shouldn’t be forced to take something that you don’t want.”
Turner started to respond by stating that no one is being forced to get the vaccine, before stopping in the realization that her employer, CBS, currently sports an extreme vaccine mandate. Turner then went on to state that by not taking time to get the jab, people who choose not to are “putting the public at risk.”
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Despite the NBA as a whole not having a vaccine mandate in place, three specific cities –Toronto, San Francisco, and New York– do have a rule in place that all professional athletes must be fully vaccinated in order to play in their home states.