Exerting power is always easier than surrendering it. This is true whether you’re a parent of a teenager and holding car keys, or whether you’re a government trying to navigate the final stages of a devastating pandemic.
New York City is in the process of dismantling many of the last of its COVID-based regulations governing public gatherings. (Whether you think this is too soon or long overdue is up to you, that’s not the topic of this particular column.) But dismantling doesn’t mean demolishing, and so that means the Brooklyn Nets will soon be in a peculiar regulatory limbo where star guard-slash-vaccine holdout Kyrie Irving would be able to sit in the arena among thousands of other fans … but not take the court among nine other players.