NBA will not fine Kyrie Irving, Nets for missed games: source
NEW YORK — The NBA will not fine Kyrie Irving or the Nets for his missed nationally-televised game against Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday, nor will they fine the star point guard for games he misses for “personal reasons,” a league source told The New York Daily News.
The spirit of the rule for nationally-televised games is to prevent teams from resting players on the biggest games of the season. Irving’s absence is not a strategic effort on the Nets’ part.
If the Nets are looking to discipline their star guard for missing consecutive games, they will have to do it themselves.
A similar situation played out in Houston, when Rockets star James Harden chose not to report to training camp in late November-early December, holding out amid reports he had requested a trade to the Nets. The league did not intervene, and the franchise neither fined nor traded him.
Harden ultimately reported to camp on Dec. 8.
Irving is in similar territory, having missed his second consecutive game for reasons he, nor his teammates, nor Nets head coach Steve Nash chose to disclose. The first of those games was a Nets-Sixers showdown that aired on TNT, and the Nets announced Irving as out for “personal reasons” against the Grizzlies on Friday, too.
Teams have fined players for going AWOL in the past. In January 2017, the Knicks fined point guard Derrick Rose $200,000 for an effective no-call, no-show for a game against the New Orleans Pelicans. Rose, instead, went home to be with his family, where he said he questioned whether he wanted to continue playing basketball professionally.
The nature of Irving’s personal reasons are unclear. Both Nash and Irving’s teammates have kept his reasons private, with Nash opting also to keep private whether Irving had the organization’s backing. There are conflicting reports regarding Irving’s hiatus, some of which suggest he is taking a stand against both the insurrection that occurred in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday and the decision to not charge the officers who shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.
It remains unclear whether Irving will play in Sunday’s matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“I messaged with Kai, but I want to keep all that stuff private,” Nash said pregame on Friday. “We don’t have any decision on Sunday yet. But we’ll deal with that and figure it out before we go on Sunday.”
Kevin Durant is expected to play against the Thunder after missing three games due to the league’s coronavirus health and safety protocol. Durant came in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 1 and the league requires players quarantine and register consecutive negative coronavirus tests for seven days from the day of the encounter.
The Nets recently encountered an opposing player in 76ers guard Seth Curry whose diagnosis as COVID-19 positive came back during the first quarter of Wednesday’s game while he was on the bench. Curry was escorted off the court and immediately isolated, and Sixers players quarantined in New York City for the night.
NBA players, however, are required to take two different COVID-19 tests in a day, and the league is not concerned with transmission from Curry to Nets players. Curry, who did not play before he was escorted off the floor, would have had to transmit the coronavirus to one of his teammates, then one of his teammates would have had to transmit the virus to a Nets player. The likelihood that happens, a league source explained, is low due to data that shows how many minutes opposing players spend in close proximity with one another.
