NEW YORK — The Brooklyn Nets no longer seem so sure they will have their whole team together for home games when the season opens.
General Manager Sean Marks had said before training camp that he didn’t expect New York’s vaccine mandate would keep any players from being able to participate. But with Kyrie Irving missing another practice, the team no longer has that confidence.
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that. As it stands now, no,” Coach Steve Nash said Wednesday. “So we’ll see what happens. But I don’t really want to speculate on something that is just currently up in the air.”
New York has a mandate requiring coronavirus vaccinations for athletes who play in or practice in the city. Irving hasn’t said whether he is or intends to be vaccinated, and even one of his close friends is uncomfortable discussing it with him.
“This is his decision. That’s his choice. We all respect it,” All-Star Kevin Durant said. “I mean, this is way bigger than hoops, so I don’t even feel comfortable talking to him about stuff like this. But I’m just here to support and here to come in here and do my job as one of the leaders of this team and when things get figured out, I got to trust and hope that it’ll get figured out.”
Irving practiced with the Nets last week when they held training camp in San Diego. But he hasn’t been with the team in two workouts back at their home training center.
The Nets play their first exhibition home game Friday against Milwaukee but don’t have a home game in the regular season until Oct. 24, so there is time for Irving if he does want to get vaccinated. If not, he wouldn’t be paid for any games he misses.
Durant and Irving were U.S. Olympic teammates in 2016 who planned a future together, agreeing to sign with the Nets on the same day in 2019. Durant made clear he wants Irving on the team but will give him time and space to figure out if he wants that, too.
“I’m not really trying to get too involved in it because it’s far bigger than myself and each one of us individually,” Durant said. “This is one man’s personal decision on his well-being.”
When Marks spoke on Sept. 21, he said a couple of Nets wouldn’t have been available at that time but said he was “confident in the following several days before camp everybody would be allowed to participate.”
Irving is the only player who still isn’t.
“We are anxious to be a whole team and Ky’s a huge part of what we do, but he’s dealing with something personal right now,” Durant said. “And while he’s dealing with that, we’re going to focus on us here in the gym, keep working. And when he’s ready to figure that out, he’ll figure that out.”
NO MARIJUANA TESTING: The NBA has agreed to not randomly test players for marijuana this season, a continuation of the policy that was put in place last year for the COVID-19 “restart bubble” and has remained since.
Drug testing will continue for things such as human growth hormone and performance-enhancers, along with what the league calls “drugs of abuse” – such as methamphetamine, cocaine and opiates. But the league’s agreement with the National Basketball Players Association over random marijuana tests will continue for at least another season.
“We have agreed with the NBPA to extend the suspension of random testing for marijuana for the 2021-22 season and focus our random testing program on performance-enhancing products and drugs of abuse,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said Wednesday.
The agreement was revealed to players in a memo from the union, the details of which were first reported by ESPN. The league suspended testing in March 2020 when play was suspended in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, then agreed with the players to test for performance-enhancers in the bubble at Walt Disney World that summer.
But marijuana wasn’t on that list, wasn’t tested for last season and now won’t be this season either.
PACERS: The Indiana Pacers traded injured guard Edmond Sumner to the Brooklyn Nets for the rights to forward Juan Pablo Vaulet and a conditional second-round pick.
Sumner tore the his left Achilles tendon during offseason workouts and had surgery Sept. 13. The former Xavier star posted had his best season in 2020-21, averaging 7.5 points, 1.8 rebounds and 0.6 steals – all career highs – along with 0.9 assists. He was Indiana’s second-round pick in 2017.
Vaulet, 25, was Charlotte’s second-round pick in 2015 but has played overseas since then. His rights were eventually traded to Brooklyn. After playing in his home country of Argentina and the last two seasons in Spain, Vaulet has a deal to play in Greece this season.
Indiana also signed NBA veteran Brad Wanamaker to a training camp deal.
MICHELLE ROBERTS is still hoping to get NBA players vaccinated at 100%, but she rejects any criticism about her clients’ hesitancy and is prepared to fight the league on withholding pay, the union executive director told the New York Daily News.
“We’ll see about that,” Roberts said Wednesday. “They’ve been reporting that we’ve agreed that if a player who was not able to play because of his non-vaccination status, they could be docked [pay]. We did not agree. The league’s position is that they can. We’ll see. If we get to that point, we’ll see.”
The union voted against mandatory vaccination, but two NBA markets — San Francisco and New York City — carry local government requirements of at least one shot for indoor gatherings. The NBA announced last week that players unable to play because of vaccination status will lose game checks.
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