With nothing assured, the NBA bounces along.
The Boston Celtics packed their bags, drove to the airport and boarded a metaphor. They had no way of knowing for sure Tuesday afternoon if there was any point to this trip to San Antonio, or if it all was for naught, but their airplane was fueled and ready to go, so they strapped themselves in and hoped for the best.
They weren’t the only ones. Every day this season, 30 NBA teams wake up and climb on their own version of that Celtics airplane. They prepare and study scouting reports for opponents they might not play. They go to morning shootarounds for games that might get scuttled that afternoon. They adhere to protocols to preserve a season always in apparent danger of being placed on hold.
It’s the same thing everyone in just about every sports league has done since last summer. It’s what a lot of other people in regular jobs have done, too.
So when word came down Monday evening that the Spurs’ game in New Orleans that night had been postponed due to contact tracing on both teams, the surprise wasn’t that the coronavirus pandemic had caught up to a 24th NBA team.
The real shock was it had
taken that long.
Given what we know about the circumstances surrounding Monday’s postponement, this wasn’t a case of carelessness, or flouting of the rules, or even, necessarily, a positive COVID-19 test on either team. After players were tested Monday morning, the game was still on, and the Spurs listed everyone but injured guard Derrick White as available.
When the league called the game off, it cited “contact tracing” issues for both teams but did not mention any positive tests. ESPN later reported a positive came from a non-team member of the traveling party.
It would make sense that, in the hours leading up to tipoff, the league decided it needed more time to determine which players had been in close contact with the person who tested positive. For a single regular-season game in mid-january, there was no need to rush the tracing and thereby risk the kind of outbreak that kept the Washington Wizards sidelined for almost two weeks.
This was an exercise in caution, yes. But the caution is warranted, and it’s a wonder the NBA has lost only 22 games through the first month-plus of the season. There is no bubble anymore. They’re out here playing in the real world, after all.
Every trip comes with its set of risks — another plane ride, another hotel checkin, another set of bus rides to and from the airport, and then to and from the arena — and some of the trips don’t even include a game. The Spurs flew to and from New Orleans this week and wound up with nothing to show for it other than a postponement (and possibly a quarantine).
And while it was a good sign the Celtics flew to San Antonio on Tuesday — they wouldn’t have done so if the Spurs were dealing with a known outbreak — Boston is no more assured of playing a game at the AT&T Center on Wednesday than the Spurs were in New Orleans on Monday.
No games are guaranteed these days, and it seems none will be for at least a few months.
Thus far, the NBA has displayed a willingness to live with that. With its Disney World restart last summer and fall, it had served as a model for how sports leagues could utilize a bubble, but that option was a non-starter for an entire season. There almost certainly would be fewer postponements if the entire league was conducting its season in one location. But players and coaches never were going to agree to be sequestered for six months.
Instead, the league is trying to keep enough teams coronavirus-free for long enough to keep some semblance of a season going. The NBA keeps tweaking its guidelines — cutting out hotel visits, tightening mask requirements on the bench and banning postgame hugs — but the only sure bet is that more postponements are coming.
Hopefully, the Celtics didn’t come to San Antonio for nothing. Hopefully, the Spurs get the all-clear when the contact tracing is complete, and hopefully they’ll wind up playing each of the four home games scheduled over the next six days.
And after that? They’ll pack their bags, drive to the airport and board another metaphor, hoping for the best again.