Melissa: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and this is The Takeaway. Grand Slam season is just days away and players are getting set to serve at the Australian Open next week. But this year the tournament's reigning champion, Novak Djokovic is not getting the welcome he wanted. You see Novak is no vaxxed. He tried to get into Australia with a medical exemption but was put in quarantine with a revoked visa instead. A judge overruled that decision and now Australian officials are fighting to keep him off the court. Here's what Novak's dad said earlier this month.
Srđan Đoković: [Serbian language]
Interpreter: Novak and his team filed the same type of documents as those 25 other tennis players and they didn’t have any problems, just Novak. They wanted to humiliate him. They could have said, "Don't come Novak," and that would have been okay. But no, they wanted to humiliate him.
Melissa: But Novak's opposition to vaccines isn't unique among star athletes. Last summer, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers lied to reporters on his vaccination status during the NFL preseason by telling people he was immunized. But on a recent visit on the Pat McAfee Show, he said that league officials knew about his situation.
Aaron: The league was fully aware of it upon my return to the Packers, and it was at that point that I petitioned them to accept my immunization status as under their vaccination protocol.
Melissa: He received a $14,000 fine for violating the league's COVID protocols. Chump change for an NFL star player like him. Now Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets on the other hand was out for the start of the NBA season because of his refusal to get vaccinated. Ironically, his team reactivated him last month to play away games after injuries and COVID protocols caused other players to miss games. For more on this, we’re joined by Kavitha Davidson, sportswriter, and correspondent on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. Welcome back to the show Kavitha.
Kavitha: Thanks so much for having me, Melissa.
Melissa: Let me start with the biggest question of all. Should we be playing professional sports full stop in a global pandemic?
Kavitha: This is the ongoing question. I feel like we've had this conversation a lot over the last going on three years now, unfortunately. Should we be playing sports? Should restaurants be open? Should kids be in school? There are all of these questions. I frankly don't really know the answer to that. Health officials are saying it's okay with certain protocols. One of those protocols is making sure everybody is vaccinated, which is why certain athletes refusal to get the shot puts the whole thing in jeopardy.
Melissa: As a college professor, at a D1 school, I watch athletes all the time bend to all kinds of rules that simply are requirements of their capacity to play full stop. Whether they want to or not, they must do A, B and C, in order to play. Why is there so much movement on the margins here around this COVID vaccine?
Kavitha: I think it's because it's become a political issue. I hate using that word because I think everything can be characterized as a political issue these days but I think it's become a fire starter. If you see the way that, for example, Novak Djokovic, and his father are going to the press about this, this has become an issue of freedom, and tyranny, and personal responsibility, and all of that, instead of exactly what you said, which is athletes subject themselves to all kinds of things beyond just what the government requires of them all the time whether it's performance-enhancing drug testing and whatnot. I'm not really sure why this is the line that is being drawn, but I think it's indicative of something larger in our culture.
Melissa: Okay, so you bring up performance-enhancing drugs. Let me just ask, is it possible that athletes are also just concerned about how anything that is relatively new in the world could affect their bodies, given that their bodies are the way that they earn their living?
Kavitha: I think that's completely valid. I think that every athlete has the individual right to be concerned and to ask questions about exactly what they do put into their bodies. Now, that said, I don't say this flippantly. Some athletes do put some ridiculous things into their bodies believing that they will help them, legal things I should say. The Tom Brady diet is a little whacky if you ask me. That being said, as each individual athlete has that right, they also have the right to have professional medical advice given to them.
There's such a consensus around the safety of these vaccines. Yes, there are some side effects but that getting COVID is actually worse. Frankly, we've seen COVID outbreaks in various leagues over the last several months. A COVID outbreak is basically what necessitated the Nets to bring Kyrie Irving back. There are just so many questions here about where people are drawing the line and why but yes, every athlete does have the right to do that.
Melissa: It's one thing to have the right to make a choice not to put substances, whacky or FDA approved in one's body, but obviously, COVID is a public health crisis. It's not just a choice you're making for yourself. I suppose I'm a little surprised when it comes to athletes, and maybe this is my naivety. Again one of the reasons we here, for example, as parents about why we should let our kids play in team sports, even when sometimes there may be potential injury is that it teaches them all kinds of lessons. One of those lessons of team sport, in particular, is to make the self less important and the crew more important. Why is that not coming through here?
Kavitha: Yes, I hate to say this, I think this is something very unique to American culture is that we take our pride and individualism to a little bit of an extreme. The compromises that we've had to make for the collective good, whether it's getting the vaccine or otherwise, or wearing masks, these aren't difficult decisions for people in other cultures and other countries to make. I point to South Korea all the time. South Korea, which by the way, ranks higher than the United States in the democracy index, so nobody can say anything there. South Koreans mask and get the shot and social distance when they're asked to because it is better for the collective good.
I agree with you that so much of the benefit of participating in a team sport is learning that camaraderie, and teamwork, and sportsmanship, and all of that. That being said, I do maintain the right of each individual athlete to maintain their independence and their individuality there. I think, for example, one of the disappointments with LeBron James, for example, is while he is vaccinated, and he finally did come out and confirm that. Here's a player who has such a platform, who has used his platform for so much good, and he's just refused to use that platform as his right to advocate for people getting the vaccine. He would be speaking to a community that could use that advice I think.
It is a difficult question here. It does come back to what is the responsibility of these athletes to be public figures? I think sometimes we overstate that. Because if you look at some of the overall numbers, the NBA, before the season started, we were all talking about Kyrie not being vaxxed before the season, but before the season, 96% of the NBA was vaccinated and at that same time, only 68% of the NYPD was. Maybe we should be talking about that instead.
Melissa: Listen, your capacity to-- the recitation of those in context vaccination numbers, as well as your ability to tell us where South Korea and the US stand in relative measure on the democracy index, it's part of why around here at The Takeaway, we just call you Kavitha the Great. Knowing that you were going to be on the show today, we got some serious Yankees fans on the team. They said even if we were talking about no vax, we had to pause and ask you about the Yankees naming a woman as a manager of one of their minor league teams.
Kavitha: Yes, Rachel Balkovec. I'm born and raised in New York, I grew up a Yankee fan, I have a Yankee tattoo so I feel this in my bones. I think I tweeted this yesterday when she had her introductory press conference. My mom who is a 72-year-old woman from India, who did not grow up watching baseball, and now loves the Yankees because of me was texting me all day about how exciting this was that we have a woman managing a minor league team now and hopefully on the path to managing a major league team. It's a huge breakthrough.
On the one hand, suddenly, we got a bunch of dudes who have never had opinions on minor league managers in their life having an opinion about Rachel. On the other hand, it is such a step forward. She was so confident and unfazed in this press conference. Of course, she got asked, understandably, a lot of questions about what it's like to be a woman and what kind of responsibility she carries. She said very plainly, “I have two jobs. One of those jobs is being a good manager, and prepping these guys, hopefully, for Major League careers. My other job is continuing to pave the way for women and making sure I do a good enough job that women not only see me as a role model, but that this opens up other opportunities to other women.”
She knows that that's the responsibility and it might be unfair, but hopefully, we stop needing to have firsts but it's extremely exciting. I think Yankee fans have a lot of frustrations with the way the team is being handled right now but this is something that we can point to with pride for sure.
Melissa: I love that one of the jobs of being the first is to make sure that you're not the last Kavitha the Great Davidson is a sportswriter and a correspondent on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. Thanks so much, Kavitha.
Kavitha: Thank you, Melissa.
[00:09:42] [END OF AUDIO]
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