As players infected with coronavirus, contact tracking quarantines and ancillary injuries shorten the list of available players, the NBA has no plans to interrupt the season, a league spokesman told ESPN.
“We anticipated that there would be game postponements this season and we plan the schedule accordingly,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass told ESPN in a statement. “There are no plans to interrupt the season and we will continue to be guided by our medical experts and health and safety protocols.”
Some team executives raised particular questions in the past turbulent days, but Commissioner Adam Silver remained committed to advancing games with a minimum of eight players available per team and trying to complete as much of the schedule as possible before large-scale access to vaccines that they could start bringing normalcy back to the league and the country.
“They tell us that it will be better at the end of the season, but I just hope that it doesn’t get in the way of the championship in the coming weeks,” a general manager told ESPN.
While the NBA has had a significantly lower percentage of positive tests than the national figures for a pandemic that kills 4,000 Americans a day, the league currently appears to be in the middle of its most prolific week of positive testing among players.
The Philadelphia 76ers and the Boston Celtics almost failed to meet the requirements of playing with eight players available this weekend because of players being quarantined due to positive tests and contact tracking; and the Miami Heat, which left with seven eligible players on Sunday, had its game with Boston postponed.
As difficult as the season was, the league still avoided a single widespread spurt within a team and has only had two games postponed so far. The NBA built a shortened schedule with the expectation of delays and flexibility to invent games.
However, teams are learning what the NFL has done this season: the loss of key personnel for positive tests and contact tracking quarantines severely affect results, and franchises are still learning how to deal with it.
Since the league began to release weekly numbers of positive tests among players, including its most recent data on January 7, there have been 63 confirmed cases of about 550 players. League sources point to a minimum of seven new cases last week – as well as more than 20 players who have lost up to 63 active days to contact tracking protocols during this period.
This is affecting the squad and could get worse before it gets better for the teams.
But the league sees evidence of an even greater risk of infection when the league is closed, another reason why health experts and doctors advising the NBA are not pushing for a stoppage now, sources told ESPN. When players were tested on returning to the team’s training grounds, the NBA saw positive test peaks – including 48 cases on December 2.
Against the backdrop of thousands of people dying each day and millions of infected and facing serious personal and financial difficulties, the NBA largely understands that it is forced to find a level of context within its own daily frustrations.
Executives and coaches are frustrated because the quality of the game and preparation has been impaired and the competitive balance is being compromised. Teams are fighting for ways to build camaraderie and chemistry when teams and players are constantly being separated, and rituals once as simple as shootings have become useless when players sometimes have to wait an hour to 90 minutes for the return of test results before they are allowed inside the facility.
In addition, organizations are concerned about how contact tracking protocols that isolate players for several days are affecting fitness and the risk of injury on their return to teams.
“We have to get the players on the court and get them back in shape,” said a GM on Sunday. “This is leading to more injuries and more wasted time.”
Before the season, the NBA had discussed expanding the squad to 19, including the ability to retain four bi-directional hired players in the lineups, but this change was not adopted.
ESPN’s Tim Bontemps contributed to this report.