Raptors head to Disney World healthy
Defending champs head into Disney bubble to take part in league’s grand experiment
The Toronto Raptors are getting ready to decamp and head into the NBA bubble at Walt Disney World.
Two weeks of individual work is behind them but most importantly, the team has come through two weeks in the COVID-19 hotbed otherwise known as Florida reportedly without incident.
According to head coach Nick Nurse, everyone is healthy.
On Thursday, the Raptors will make their way north to Orlando and enter the NBA campus as the third wave of three groups arriving to take over the ESPN Wide World of Sports park area of the grounds for the next three months and finish this 2019-20 season once and for all.
Once there, they immediately go into a mini quarantine in their respective hotel rooms that will last between 36 and 48 hours depending on the amount of time it takes them to provide consecutive negative tests for the novel coronavirus. At that point, the chains come off, but only to the extent that they will be allowed 5-on-5 drills for the first time since early March, when the NBA shut down.
Those inside the bubble will still practise social distancing and follow the handwashing and mask-wearing protocols they’ve been doing for months, but basketball as they know it will become a little more familiar to them.
The Raptors’ two-week stay in Naples, with workouts half an hour north in Fort Myers, was deemed a success by Nurse.
“Well, first and foremost, we’ve been safe and done well there. That’s been good,” Nurse said. “We’re not going to count any chickens, that’s for sure. As each day of testing that goes by you’ve got a bit of anxiety to get that email at night from the doc and see what the results are, so, first and foremost, that’s been good.”
On the court, what he has seen has also been good. It’s been strictly individual on-court work to this point — one player per basket, no more than four on the court at any one time — but Nurse is confident the team got as much as they could have out of the situation given the circumstances.
“We’ve been solid,” he said. “I really like the individual work that especially a lot of our young guys have gotten; it’s been way more consistent. I mean when you’re not flying and playing and games interrupting and there’s late flights where you need a day off the next day ... it’s just been a consistent block of work, both in the weight room and on the court.”
Nurse pointed out having the team all together in one place for these past two weeks has also allowed them to control things like their food intake and nutrition.
While one would expect a group of wealthy young athletes to somewhat bristle at their sudden lack of freedom, Nurse hasn’t sensed much of that at all.
“They’ve had great attitudes,” he said. “I haven’t sensed hardly any boredom or waning or not another day of one-on-zero work. I’ve sensed great energy, great professionalism. The vibe in the gym, even though it’s different, has still been pretty good. We still got our music playing and you look across the floor and guys are working and sweating and getting better, so it’s been probably a pleasant surprise and a pleasant experience so far.”
But now the grand experiment begins. Take 22 teams and put them in a confined space for up to three months. What could go wrong?
The correct answer is anything and everything, but the league is hoping all the measures they have taken to prevent an outbreak within the bubble will be sufficient.
Having seen the success the Raptors had with that in their own little experiment in Naples/ Fort Myers, Nurse is even a little more optimistic that the league can pull off its own return to play than he was two weeks ago.
“Let’s not get overconfident, but let’s say slightly more confident,” Nurse said of his feelings going into Orlando.
“It feels like we are in a safe environment. I mean we are going a long ways out of our way to make it extra safe, as we should. I think that contributes to it. We really are in the hotel. We are confined. We are away from everything. There is cleaning all over the place. Everyone is wearing masks. We go to the gym and there’s cleaning and we come back. It feels really safe. That’s good.
“I would imagine we go in there (to Orlando) and I think the early stages or days of the Disney thing are critical. Getting a whole bunch of testing done and getting kind of to a point there. Again I think it will all be done at a really high level and remain fairly safe. I hope I’m right.”
Like most rational thinkers, Nurse knows speaking definitively on what lies ahead is a fool’s game.