COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in the NBA locker room, and the Toronto Raptors are the last team to face significant setbacks. Their last two games have been postponed, and when they return to the court on Wednesday night against the Pistons, they will be seriously short of players.
Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, OG Anunoby, Malachi Flynn and Patrick McCaw will be eliminated due to the league’s health and safety protocols. This is bad enough, but they will also be without trainer Nick Nurse and five other staff members. Assistant coach Sergio Scariolo will move to the front of the bench, just as he did at the beginning of this process, when Nurse was absent.
If there is good news, it is that the Raptors had “several days without new cases”, according to GM Bobby Webster. Still, he admitted that it was a challenging period for the team, and not just from a basketball standpoint.
“It was a difficult day. To get here and be able to practice, we had to overcome several obstacles.
“It is what you can imagine. It is the emotional stress of having colleagues who potentially, obviously, may be sick. The enormous amount of stress that everyone feels, everyone is stepping on eggs here in the locker room and you cannot necessarily be so friendly. .. Basketball will continue, we will play, but just maintaining everyone’s belonging and familiarity is very important. “
The Raptors haven’t played since February 26 against the Houston Rockets. Since then, his games against the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons have been postponed. Wednesday’s game against the Pistons is a make-up of that game. At this point, it is not clear when the game against the Bulls will be rescheduled.
Before the season, the league only released the first half of the schedule, in order to create flexibility in the inevitable game events that had to be changed. But at the end of last month they announced the second half of the schedule and most of the room for maneuver is gone. Raptors competitions are the first to be postponed, as the league canceled the rest of the schedule.