NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Monday that he would have "preferred" that the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association come to an agreement on a vaccine mandate, in part to avoid it becoming an "adversarial" issue for the league's players, as it has for Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving.
"I won't try to speak for [the NBPA], other than the view that some players had, I think -- including maybe some players who are vaccinated -- that it should be an individual choice among the players," Silver said during his annual preseason news conference, which was conducted virtually due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.