NETS LOCKER ROOM
‘You get snatched real quick’: How the variant hit Brooklyn
Day’Ron Sharpe was supposed to be in the clear. As Nets players started falling out of the rotation in mid-December due to positive COVID-19 test results, Sharpe was part of a small group of Nets who had made the cut when the dust settled.
“So you kind of feel like, ‘Alright. We’re all good,’” Blake Griffin recounted on Saturday. “And then DayDay is with us this morning, he is even here this afternoon, and then I walk back to the locker room, and they’re like ‘DayDay got pulled.’”
Testing positive for COVID-19 can be a little embarrassing, especially given the implications: Once you test positive, you either have to register two negative COVID-19 results in a 24-hour window, or you’re separated from the team for a 10-day period. That’s time away from your team, minutes you can’t help your team win games.
“It’s almost like you got pulled out of class and everybody’s kind of like, ‘oooooooooooh,’” Griffin said. “It’s just crazy. I don’t really know how to describe it. … You just walk into the locker room and you just kind of look at everybody and just laugh. And then you just move on.”
The worst part about the NBA’s COVID-19 testing process is that the players take PCR tests, not rapid. That means a player can take a test at night and not get their results back until the next afternoon. In some cases, a player can take a test on the morning of a game day and get the results right before tipoff — or in Kevin Durant’s case last season, in the middle of a game.
The testing process is cut-and-dry: a negative result, and you’re in the clear. But a positive result?
“Pretty much you get snatched real quick, go into the protocols or whatever,” said DeAndre’ Bembry, who cleared the protocols Friday morning after registering two consecutive negative test results. “It’s a little funny.”
Sometimes, the results don’t come back until after a game, like they did for Nets rookies Cam Thomas, Kessler Edwards and David Duke Jr., who are now serving time in the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
“It just depends on where you’re at,” Bembry continued. “Even some of the rookies, they had a couple of games while we were out, and they ended up getting snatched right after the game, so it just depends on the situation.”
Patty Mills is one of just three Nets — the others being Griffin, Nic Claxton and Joe Harris — not to test positive for COVID-19 during this latest omicron wave. Perhaps the cure for the virus is in his blood, or maybe he steps into an airtight, self-isolated bubble when he finishes his work on the court.
Whatever the reason, Mills doesn’t know how so many of his teammates have tested positive while he’s been able to Euro-step the virus in the month of December.
“Yeah, mate: You, me and probably a lot of other people are trying to work that out,” Mills said. “I don’t know, mate. Obviously, there’s precautionary measures you have to take to be able to be available, and I want to play so, to be honest, I’m not sure.”
Mills, however, has watched his teammates disappear, one by one, and watched as seven of his teammates tested positive in a two-day span. While 13 of his teammates have entered the health and safety protocols in the past week-andchange, Mills and Griffin have been two peas in a COVID-free, isolated pod, watching their teammates get taken to the principal’s office. “I was the other classmate that was at lunch, looking at my friend being taken off by the teacher, and it wasn’t the greatest feeling because you don’t have anyone to play with on the playground,” Mills said. “As a teammate you just try to be supportive and keep the good vibes rolling and just try to be there.”
Rest assured, the returning Nets players will be out of condition.
On one hand, the players clearing the health and safety protocols will have fresh legs, a blessing for both Harden and Kevin Durant, whose minutes had become a concern in the first portion of the season. On the other hand, professional basketball requires elite conditioning. Bembry, for example, will rejoin the team for the Christmas game, but only had a stationary bike and dumbbells to workout with at home.
“That week not working out, two weeks not working out, definitely hits,” he said. “Especially when you get out there in an actual game, because it’s nothing that compares to an actual game when you’re out there running around back and forth, and you were just off for a week and a half, two weeks. The pace that we play in an NBA game is hectic, so it’ll definitely be some conditioning for some of us.”
The Nets, however, don’t have the luxury to make excuses. They have to worry about not getting taken to the principal’s office — that is, not getting snatched off the floor, out of the locker room or whisked away in a corridor due to a positive COVID-19 test result.
That Christmas Day game isn’t getting postponed. The Nets will have to play with whoever’s available. For now, that includes Harden, Mills, Griffin, Bembry, Claxton, Paul Millsap, Jevon Carter and the four players signed to 10day deals: Langston Galloway, James Ennis, Shaquille Harrison and Wenyen Gabrielle.
“We just do the best we can,” said head coach Steve Nash. “A lot of these decisions are still to be made, before the game, during the game, as the game goes on. (So) we just have to be very fluid and adaptable and (have) a great attitude and take it as an opportunity.”