The NBA canceled two more games because of problems related to COVID-19 and contact tracking, postponing Monday’s Dallas game between the Mavericks and the New Orleans Pelicans, as well as Tuesday’s clash in Chicago between the Bulls and the Boston Celtics.
These moves came a day after the Miami game in Boston was canceled because of problems tracking contacts within the Heat. That would have been a showdown in which the Celtics would have only eight players available, after seven had been discarded according to the league’s health and safety protocols to play through the pandemic.
The Mavericks-Pelicans and Bulls-Celtics games increase the total number of games postponed this season to four due to problems related to the coronavirus and means that the league will have three consecutive days of postponements. The Heat is scheduled to play in Philadelphia on Tuesday – but on Monday afternoon, they stayed at their Boston hotel, not knowing what to do. The 76ers played on Saturday with eight players available, but only seven of them healthy in the loss to the Denver Nuggets.
Dallas did not have a minimum of eight players released to play on Monday, ESPN sources said Adrian Wojnarowski.
The league said it would meet on Monday with the National Basketball Players Association to “modify the league’s health and safety protocols”. The NBA also scheduled a special meeting of the board of governors for Tuesday, sources told Wojnarowski.
The topics that will be discussed during Monday’s meeting, according to sources, are potentially the reexamination of shootings and lengths of practice, socialization before and after the game on the court, other restrictions on dining in restaurants and stricter rules on the use of masks.
There were four Dallas players on the COVID-19 protocol list on Sunday night, the most recent addition being Maxi Kleber, who tested positive for the coronavirus, sources told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. Beginners Josh Richardson and Dorian Finney-Smith and reserve Jalen Brunson had already been dropped; the three stayed behind in Denver after a victory over the Nuggets on Thursday and lost Saturday’s home win against Orlando.
The other game, in addition to the Boston v Miami clash on Sunday, to have been postponed was the December 23 game between Oklahoma City and Houston. The NBA said Sunday night that the league anticipated there would be problems and has no plans to interrupt the season because of the current problems that some teams are facing.
“It was definitely a unique start to the year,” said Heat guard, Duncan Robinson, in a Reddit appearance. “There were different challenges with all the protocols and new standards. I think the general opinion is that everyone wants to play, but everyone also wants to be safe first.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.