Chris Mannix and Howard Beck run through the top stories from the NBA’s Media Day, from Kyrie Irving’s vaccination status—and how the vaccine holdouts will be impacted this season —the Sixers brass’s response to Ben Simmons, Damian Lillard’s future in Portland, Zion’s injury, Porzingis at power forward and more.
The following transcript is an excerpt from The Crossover NBA podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.
Chris Mannix: So I've talked to a few people within the league and within the Nets, and there's some optimism I would say, that Kyrie is going to get the vaccine. And the Nets have a little bit of a runway here to get him set up because they're in San Diego right now for the start of their training camp, there is no vaccine mandate in California, they play their first exhibition game in Los Angeles on October 3rd, Kyrie can play in that game. They don't play back at the Barclays Center until October 8th. So they've got a little bit of wiggle room here. And from what I gather the inability to play in the home games, the potential inability to play in a key playoff game will resonate with Kyrie Irving. There's also some hope among people I've talked to, that Kevin Durant can get through to Kyrie Irving and say, look, I understand your beliefs, you don't want to do this, but it's a big year here, right? I mean, this is a a championship season. Can you just put it aside and do what I've done, what James Harden has done, what most of our team has done? So there's some optimism there.
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