An Open Letter to Matisse Thybulle, One of My Favorite Sixers

On the eve of the NBA playoffs, please get jabbed - for your own sake, and for “the greater team.”

Dear Mr. Thybulle,

I’m a big fan. Like many Philadelphians, I consider you one of my favorite players. We held our breath as the trade deadline approached, and we were greatly relieved when it passed. You are a charismatic, defensively innovative, and exciting player to watch.

But as NBA and Canadian regulations do not allow unvaccinated players to play in Canada, you had to skip this week’s game against the Toronto Raptors. They are a uniquely tough match up for the Sixers, who lost without you. And it looks like your team will meet them in the playoffs, possibly as soon as the first round, depending on the outcomes of tonight’s games.

As a family physician, and as a Sixers fan through the days of Barkley, Iverson, and Embiid, I am politely adding my voice to the chorus advising you to get vaxxed already.

I’ve played basketball. Once I even dunked a tennis ball, which is pretty good for a 6’2” kid without much in the way of ups. I know that games can feel like battles, with your teammates a band of brothers. And when two great teams tangle, it’s an allegorical warfare that satisfies a deep human need - gratification from competition and conflict. Without the blood. Just watch the fan faces in the crowd.

Team members have to make sacrifices for the greater good of the corp. They suffer injuries, they dish the ball for another’s glory, and they get vaccinated. This protects them personally, and those around them from sickness.

The greater American “team” is also suffering from a lack of cohesion, with only 66% of us being fully vaccinated, and only 30% of us having received a booster. We’ve been divided by fearmongering, disinformation, and distrust. But still the majority of us have rolled up our sleeves, for ourselves and for our teammates.

As one of the best defensive players in the league, you don’t need to be reminded that the best offense is a good defense. Or maybe you do?

Vaccines are safe. They are not risk free, and I validate my patients’ concerns about this. But researchers estimate that over 12-22 million people have died of Covid-19 around the world, and the toll of non-lethal damage is even more staggering. Vaccines have prevented millions of deaths, but have caused only a handful. They reduce the risk of long Covid, which can be debilitating even for young, healthy people. Every time we get Covid, the dice are rolled again.

I will concede that you are at lower risk of severe disease. From public reporting, it seems you had Covid in November, 2021, at the same time as many of your vaccinated teammates. This was likely Delta. I read that you then had an equivocal positive in early January, 2022, which might have been a false positive. But when I consider the extreme wave of Omicron that occurred around the holidays, and that up to 50% of Americans contracted Omicron, it is possible that you had a mild, fleeting case. Your immunity against future severe disease is probably pretty good if this is the case. But your immune system against SARS-CoV-2 could be elite with vaccination.

One dose of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine would also clear you to play within 2 weeks, per Canadian and NBA regulations.

Kids look up to you. My kid goes to school in Philly, and the talk among the 5th grade class on Friday after the missed game in Toronto was apparently one of disbelief and disappointment. The 5th graders in her school are all vaccinated, and they were saying, and I quote: “C’mon Thybulle! Just get the shot!”

I’ve read that you spent part of your childhood in Australia, and helped lead the Australian Olympic Basketball team to a bronze medal in Tokyo. I traveled to Australia once. It was amazing! But I was slightly horrified by the saltwater crocodiles, Box jellyfish, and Taipan snakes, among all the other deadly hazards in the wild there. Compared to these monsters, a little jab in the arm is not so bad.

And don’t just take it from me, take it from all-time great Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who also writes here on Substack. A picture is worth a thousand words, and his writing about athletes needing to lead the vaccination drive has been convincing for many, including Lebron:

Athletes and other celebrities have a public platform to help alleviate this crisis and to save lives. To not take on that responsibility harms the sports and entertainment industries, the community, and the country. Those who claim they need to do “more research” are simply announcing they have done no research, because the overwhelming consensus of immunologists and other medical experts is that the vaccine is effective and safe. And will prevent the unnecessary deaths of thousands.

Kareem getting a jab, picture borrowed from his Substack post.

And then there’s Philly. The sports fans. Two narratives are developing here that could have sad endings. James Harden, superstar, came here in part to escape the dysfunctional dynamics of his former Brooklyn team, whose season was disrupted mightily by superstar Kyrie Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated. It would be unfortunate if vaccination dysfunction contributed to yet another team’s lost opportunities. The second narrative is that the prime reason the thrilled Sixers drafted you, Mr. Thybulle, was to shore up their defense after being knocked out of the playoffs in 2019 by - you guessed it - the same Toronto Raptors that just beat the Sixers without you in Canada.

In conclusion, though the vaccines are not risk free, they are much safer than getting Covid, again, unvaccinated - and certainly safer than this Australian cassowary. Although cassowaries are generally wary of humans, if provoked they can be deadly. They have been labeled the world’s most dangerous bird, and are one of the dinosaurs’ closest living relatives. It would be wise to take all necessary precautions against Cassowaries, and Raptors in general:

The kids in the Philadelphia schools will salute you if you show up in Canada to play. They will know why you are playing. It will be heroic, like all sacrifices for a team. It will reinforce an important public health message for all those who follow you, and might just rewrite a nasty Philly narrative that could develop. You would probably have to get the shot ASAP, like today.

I wish you well. Sincerely. And if you have a medical or other good reason not to get vaccinated, then my sincere apologies. I’ll also give you a front row seat to my kid’s next basketball game in the Philadelphia Dragons League any time. If you’re vaxxed, that is.