Sixers Guard Not Fully Vaccinated, Will Miss Playoff Games In Toronto: ‘I Was Raised In A Holistic Household’

It appeared that the concerns over unvaccinated NBA players being forced to sit out games was a thing of the past. 

In late March, New York City mayor Eric Adams made an exemption to NYC’s private sector vaccine mandate, allowing unvaccinated professional athletes — like Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets — and performers to work in the city. 

“Today I signed emergency Executive Order 62, expanding the performance exemption to private employer mandates,” Adams said. “This is about putting New York City based performance on a level playing field. Day one when I was mayor, I looked at the rule that stated ‘home town players had an unfair disadvantage to those who were coming to visit.’” 

The season-long saga around Irving had been headline news since October, and the announcement from Adams allowed fans of the NBA to breathe a sigh of relief. 

Not so fast. 

On Sunday, Philadelphia 76ers guard Matisse Thybulle announced that he is not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 — something that was rumored to be the case for many weeks — and will not be able to play in his team’s road games against the Toronto Raptors in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. 

In November, Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announced the end of vaccine exemptions for professional athletes starting January 15. 

“As of January 15th, there will no longer be an exemption in place for professional and amateur athletes,” said Mendicino, a member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governing Liberal Party.

The Sixers will play at least two games in Toronto, with games three and four scheduled to be played at Scotiabank Arena. 

“I was raised in a holistic household where anti-vax was not a term that was used,” Thybulle said on Sunday. “It’s a weird term that’s been thrown around to just label people, but we grew up with Chinese medicine and naturopathic doctors and with that upbringing, coming into this situation, I felt like I had a solid foundation of medical resources that could serve me beyond what this vaccine could do for me. As things escalated and as this situation has played out, I’ve obviously had to reconsider and look at it differently”

#Sixers wing Matisse Thybulle on why he’s not vaccinated: pic.twitter.com/slubnLyVhn

— Tom Moore (@TomMoorePhilly) April 11, 2022

“To that point, it got to the point last year during the playoffs where I did actually consider getting vaccinated and went through with getting the first shot, the first dose because, at that point, I was under the impression that getting vaccinated means that I could not get the disease and transmit it to other people,” Thybulle continued. “I felt like if I’m going to be a part of society in the position I’m in, I need to do what’s right for the greater good. That argument of the greater good held a lot of weight for me.” 

Thybulle went on to explain that as the science changed, and that vaccinated individuals “can still spread the disease,” he decided against receiving the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. 

“As things progressed and this virus has changed in many different ways, it just showed to the science that that wasn’t the case anymore, that even while being vaccinated, you can still spread the disease,” Thybulle said. “So for me, in my reasoning, it felt like getting vaccinated was not something I need to do to protect other people, and it was something that I would have to do to then protect myself and with that being considered and the holistic background of my upbringing and just the way I view medicine in general, I felt like I was secure in going to the doctors that I have to treat COVID if I did get it and in the case that I did, I was able to go about it in my holistic way and I’m able to sit here today healthy and be OK because of it.”

The Sixers begin their playoff series against the Raptors on Saturday, April 16, in Philadelphia.

Joe Morgan is the Sports Reporter for The Daily Wire. Most recently, Morgan covered the Clippers, Lakers, and the NBA for Sporting News. Send your sports questions to [email protected].

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