Suns leave July 7 for Orlando restart
The Phoenix Suns will head for Orlando on July 7 as part of the first group of teams traveling to Walt Disney World Resort for the 2019-20 NBA season resumption, team officials have confirmed.
The 22 teams are traveling in stages from July 7-9 as part of Phase 3 of the season restart. The eight-game regular
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Suns’ Devin Booker is in a win-win situation, even if team continues to lose, season “seeding” games are set to begin July 30.
The Suns are part of “Team Cohort #A” travel group.
As explained in the 113-page Health and Safety Protocols, players on teams in Cohort A are “expected to clear quarantine and begin team activities on July 9.
To assure every team has the same amount of time to prepare in Orlando, the staggered travel concides with when a team resumes games.
For example, teams arriving July 9 won’t start playing until August 1 or 2 according to the document.
Phoenix (26-39) opens against Washington (24-40) at 1 p.m. July 31 at
first”
the Visa Athletic Center on the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
FOX Sports Arizona networks will televise the game as well as the Suns’ next six. The TV broadcast for Phoenix’s eighth and final regular-season game is being determined.
COVID-19 testing will continue in Phase 3 for players and essential staff every other day “through the day of the team’s travel to the campus (and both of the two days prior to the travel day whether or not such days are on the every-other-day schedule).”
Teams can’t have “in-person group workouts, practices, skill or conditioning sessions, or other team activities – including, but not limited to, informal scrimmages and pick-up games, meetings, or strategy sessions” in Phase 3.
Individual workouts are permitted as no more than eight players may be in the facility at any one time other than any necessary overlap to conduct coronavirus testing. The Suns have been having workouts at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
The Suns are six games out of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference held by Memphis, but are just 2-1/2 out of the ninth spot Portland, New Orleans and Sacramento consume.
In order to make the playoffs, Phoenix will have to claim the eighth spot, which is highly unlikely, or get within four games of the eighth-place team to force a play-in tournament.
Then then Suns would have to go 2-0 against the eighth-place team to return to the postesason for the first time since 2010. A play-in loss would end their season.