TEAM HOPEFUL COVID BREAK WILL BE SHORT
Celtics game still in limbo, but optimism remains
For Washington coach Scott Brooks, the worst part of COVID-19 isolation was, well, the isolation.
With his team all but shut down for 13 days earlier this month due to an outbreak, the most Brooks saw of his players and staff was through a pane of car windshield when they would arrive for twice-a-day testing at the club’s practice facility.
“By chance if you come in at the same time as a player driving up, you’d wave,” Brooks said. “There was not a conversation. You’d call or text later. The whole thing was strange.”
It is an experience the Spurs are hopeful they might be able to avoid in the wake of their first
Covid-related postponement of the season.
Their game Wednesday against Boston at the AT&T Center remains in limbo, after Monday’s game in New Orleans was nixed under health and safety protocols.
The issue arose from a possible coronavirus exposure of a non-team member who was involved in both teams’ traveling parties in the days leading to the contest.
That triggered a round of testing and contact tracing among both rosters that could not be completed by the scheduled 8 p.m. start time at the Smoothie King Center.
With neither team able to clear the eight players the league requires to play a game, the NBA deemed it unplayable less than two hours before tipoff.
It became the 22nd game postponed this season but the first for the Spurs.
The Spurs have returned to San Antonio from New Orleans and are awaiting results from a series of COVID-19 tests that will determine the team’s next steps.
By 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, when the Spurs are slated to tip off against Boston, players and staff will have undergone two full days of testing. If at least eight players can be cleared, Wednesday’s contest will proceed as planned.
Perhaps the surprise wasn’t that the Spurs finally had a game scuttled. It was that it took a month into the season for it to happen.
“For the most part, the
past year and a half has been a little bit different,” Spurs guard Lonnie Walker IV said. “You kind of have to expect the unexpected, go with the flow and find your way through it all.”
There is cautious optimism around the team and the league that the game will be played, but that cannot be ensured until a final round of testing Wednesday afternoon.
“At this point, every day is a new day and we’ve got to take it that way,” Walker said. “We’re not trying to think too negative about what’s going to happen next.”
For the Spurs and 23 other teams who have navigated one or more pandemic postponements this season, the uncertainty is the most difficult part. Earlier this month, the Celtics had three consecutive games scratched due to an outbreak in their locker room.
It took a week for enough players to work their way through the health protocols so that Boston could resume its season.
The Celtics still have not played a game this season with their top three scorers — Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Kemba Walker — in the lineup together.
“It’s an incredibly detailed program whenever there are any concerns at all,” Boston coach Brad Stevens said at the time. “They basically relive the last few days of your time together. It’s a long, arduous task.”
For some affected teams, the wait to get back on the court is a short one.
When Philadelphia and Oklahoma City had a Jan. 17 game postponed due to ongoing contact tracing, both teams were on the floor for their next scheduled outings.
The fact the Spurs-pelicans game was similarly halted due to contact tracing — and not a confirmed positive test among the players — is a good sign for Wednesday’s game to proceed.
Other teams have not been as fortunate.
The weeklong gap in Boston’s schedule from Jan. 8-15 was the longest in
the league until Washington said, “Hold my PCR swab.”
The Wizards saw six consecutive contests called off, leading to an unscheduled break of nearly two weeks. Washington did not play a game between Jan. 11 and Sunday, when they returned an undermanned version of their team to the court in San Antonio and lost 121-101.
Before that game, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich commiserated with the Wizards’ circumstances, calling it “just an awful situation.”
For the bulk of 13 days while the Wizards cleared medical red tape, Brooks’ players and staff members were virtual strangers to him.
When the Wizards finally had a quorum of healthy bodies to at least warrant a practice, Brooks still did not have enough players cleared to go a full 5-on-5.
“We love the game, love to be in the gym, love to compete,” Brooks said. “Knowing that we weren’t going to have it, or when it would be back — that unknown was not fun to be a part of. I just hope we never have to deal with this again.”
The Spurs are not yet out of the woods following their first COVID-19 cancellation of the season. Still, with another game up in the air Wednesday, they no doubt already share the feeling.