ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith has issued an on-air apology to NBA star Kyrie Irving for previously criticizing his refusal to comply with COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Smith stated that watching Dr. Anthony Fauci plead the Fifth Amendment before Congress prompted his change of perspective.
"The person I thought about most was Kyrie Irving," Smith said on his show. "There’s several people that we all owe apologies to, and I’ll put myself at the front of the list, but none more so than the apology that I owe to Kyrie Irving."
Smith, who had previously been critical of Irving's decision, suggested that the basketball player may have been "more right than we have given him credit for" and was "unquestionably more vilified than he deserved."
During the 2022-2022 NBA season, Irving was sidelined for 35 games, including all home games at Barclays Center, due to New York state's vaccine mandate for athletes and performers. This mandate was later lifted in March 2022 by then-Mayor Eric Adams, who introduced an exemption for athletes and performers.
Smith's remarks came after Dr. Fauci appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The exact nature of Fauci's testimony that prompted Smith's apology was not detailed, but Smith indicated it compelled him to revisit his earlier stance on vaccine mandates and the individuals who opposed them.
"We saw vaccine mandates and booster mandates and you know distancing stipulations and mask mandates and all of this other stuff," Smith recounted. "And along the way, there were a select few individuals in the world of sports especially that stood up and said, ‘Nah, I’m not down for this.’"
Smith characterized his apology as "atonement" and dedicated a significant portion of his program to re-evaluating the situation surrounding vaccine mandates and individual choices.