Update: 12/18/21 15:51
Per Brooklyn Nets reporter Kristian Winfield, Irving will not to have five days of negative testing to return to the court. It was originally posted that a series of tests were required. See Winfield’s tweet below:
Original post 12/18/21 15:42 PM
Less than 24 hours after the Brooklyn Nets announced that the unvaccinated Kyrie Irving will be playing on a Part-Time basis, he’s entered virus protocols. Per regulations for unvaccinated players, he will have to quarantine for seven days and return five days of negative tests to be cleared. The rest is hard to predict, however, given Irving’s circumstances. He has yet to take the court this season after refusing to get vaccinated.
“NBA players can return to the court in sooner than 10 days if they register two consecutive negative tests, but it’s unclear how quickly Irving can be available given his extended break from basketball,” writes Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal. The NBA and many professional sports leagues are facing a surge in case numbers as a result of the spread of the Omicron variant.
Irving is one of the many positive (or inconclusive) tests for the Brooklyn Nets who are facing an outbreak. Eight vaccinated players have tested positive for COVID including the other two-thirds of Brooklyn’s “big three”, Kevin Durant and James Harden. Fans will be keeping their eyes open to see how soon teams can return to full power but it’s simply hard to predict given the unknown surrounding this new variant. Some spent the last few hours salivating over the return of the electrifying Kyrie Irving but it’s looking like that may have to wait until next month. “If he’s ineligible for the team’s upcoming road trip, the earliest he could see the court would be Jan. 5 or Jan. 12,” continues Cohen.
The Twitter-verse speaks:
https://twitter.com/JoshsLeftNut/status/1472262334861164549?s=20
