Fans of the Boston Celtics hope their team avoids the COVID-19 travails of last season, and many might have been surprised to hear the two vice presidents in the NBA's Player's Association referring to the vaccine as a "personal choice" as controversy over local mandates churned around the league.

Why wouldn't a union whose job it is to act in the best interests of its players, their health, and their ability to play in games automatically support vaccine mandates? At the Celtics Lab, we decided to wrap up our offseason programming looking into the dynamics of how such a situation might have come to be by talking with friend of the podcast N. Jeremi Duru, professor and published expert on professional sports unions.

He joins your usual hosts Cam Tabatabaie, Alex Goldberg, and Justin Quinn as they try to understand how collective bargaining and public health work together in today's NBA.

We of course also cover the news of the week, say goodbye to some camp invitees, and try to make sense of Boston's waiving of Jabari Parker just hours before he was brought back and more.

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