Though Andrew Wiggins is one of the last remaining COVID-19 vaccine holdouts in the NBA, Golden State Warriors veteran Draymond Green said he has no plans to try and convince his teammate to get protected against the coronavirus.
Trying to convince someone to get vaccinated, he said, just isn’t his place.
“That would be like Andrew — who everyone knows recently just had a kid maybe five months or so ago now — that would be like me telling him, ‘Yo, your wife is going into labor. How dare you leave this team and not go tend to your wife?'” Green said Thursday, via ESPN. “That’s something that’s personal to him. That’s something that’s health-related. That’s something that’s personal to his family. This is no different.”
Though Green may view it as a “personal decision,” Wiggins’ choice to remain unvaccinated impacts Green and the rest of the Warriors in multiple ways.
Perhaps most importantly, Wiggins is currently not allowed to play any games at the Chase Center due to a San Francisco ordinance — something the NBA said it follow. The NBA said this week that unvaccinated players won’t be paid for games missed for this reason, too.
Wiggins currently would miss about half of the Warriors’ games this season, something that directly impacts Green and the rest of the team’s success. And, when Wiggins is allowed to play and practice with the team, he is putting members of the organization at a higher risk of contracting or spreading the coronavirus.
So, personal decision or not, Green and the rest of the Warriors will certainly face the consequences.
Draymond Green compares polio vaccine to COVID-19 vaccine
Green, who is set to enter his 10th season in the league this fall, sounded like he wasn’t worried about Wiggins missing games — even as a leader on the team.
“I’m not in any position to tell him what he should or should not be doing,” Green said, via ESPN. “And as a leader of his team, I’m not going to go to him and say, ‘Hey man, we really need …’ No, you do what you feel. I’m not going to go and ask him, did he get a polio vaccine? So why would I go ask him if he got a COVID vaccine?
“It’s not my place or my business on whether he gets vaccinated or not — it’s your own personal choice at the end of the day what you do with your body. It’s not my place to tell him what he should or shouldn’t do with his. Because he’s not going to come tell me what I should do with my body.”
Polio, for the record, was eradicated from nearly every country on the planet due to widespread implementation of the vaccine. The United States, for the same reason, has been polio-free since 1979.
So Green wouldn’t need to ask anyone about getting a polio vaccine, as that hasn’t been a real threat in decades — or during Green’s or Wiggins’ lifetime, for that matter.
Regardless, even as plenty of current and former NBA stars are speaking out to urge players to get vaccinated, Green said he doesn’t like how that conversation has evolved.
“We’re dealing with something that to me feels like has turned into a political war when you’re talking about vaccinated [people] and non-vaccinated [people],” Green said, via ESPN. “I think it’s become very political.”
