What happened in days preceding 2 Suns games being postponed

The Phoenix Suns have felt the NBA is doing everything possible to avoid COVID-19.

“We’re basically getting two tests every morning to make sure we’re healthy,” Suns coach Monty Williams said Monday. “We’ve got a list of places where can and can’t go. On the airplanes, the stewardesses are staying away from us for the most part. If the flights are short. We have no food. I don’t know what else they can do to be honest.”

The NBA just tightened its health and safety protocols “in response to the surge of COVID-19 cases across the country and an uptick among NBA teams requiring potential player quarantines,” the league announced Tuesday.

Yet the Suns didn’t play their scheduled

Washington didn’t have the league-minimum eight players required for a game, the league announced Tuesday. The NBA also postponed Friday’s Washington-Detroit for the same reason in regards to the Wizards.

Sources informed The Arizona Republic all the Suns players tested negative for COVID-19 as the NBA and National Basketball Players Association announced Wednesday afternoon that 16 new players have “returned confirmed positive tests” out of the 497 players tested for COVID-19 since Jan. 6.

The Suns didn’t have enough players to play Wednesday who hadn’t been in contact with the Wizards players to play, sources informed The Republic. On Tuesday, the Wizards tweeted Rui Hachimura and Moe Wagner were questionable for Wednesday’s game due to health and safety protocols.

The NBA has required players to receive consecutive negative tests to play. As of Wednesday evening, nine games had been postponed this week, including the two Suns games.

Tuesday’s announcement on the Utah-Washington game raised concerns for Phoenix’s next game against Atlanta, but as of Tuesday evening, Suns officials said the game at Phoenix Suns Arena was full go.

Less than 24 hours later, the game was postponed. And then about eight hour after that, Friday’s game also was.

The Suns are scheduled to play at home Saturday against Indiana, a team they just beat last week in Indianapolis, Saturday.

Suns officials informed The Republic on Wednesday the NBA must give them “the green light” to play again.

Here’s a timeline leading up to Wednesday’s postponement:

Friday evening: Suns-Pistons pregame

The Suns began a three-game road trip Friday at Detroit minus rookie Jalen Smith, who was out due to health and safety protocols.

Smith didn’t make the trip as the team left Thursday for Detroit. The rest of the Suns were listed as active for Friday’s game. “Everybody’s good, so prayerful for that,” Williams said before Friday’s game.

So Phoenix had cleared the testing as every player was available to play.

The Suns didn’t list any player being out due to health and safety protocols outside of Smith for Friday’s game at Detroit or Saturday’s game at Indiana. Only Cameron Payne was listed out for Saturday’s game with an ankle injury. Payne also didn’t play Monday at Washington.

Monday evening: Suns-Wizards pregame

The Suns were set to play the Wizards, whose best player, NBA-leading scorer Bradley Beal, was a late scratch in Washington’s previous game Saturday against Miami due to health and safety protocols.

Williams was being asked about the situation going into Monday’s game when he immediately stopped the question.

“I’m not touching that,” Williams said before Monday’s game. “I get where you’re going, but I don’t know how to answer that properly. If the league deems it’s safe for him to play? The league is doing everything

they can to keep us safe and push our business along. So that’s all I can really say about that.”

Williams also talked about seeing his mom in the hotel parking lot leading up to the game as he hadn’t seen her since Thanksgiving 2019.

Williams is from the Washington D.C. area in Prince George’s County, Maryland. He said he took a selfie with her in the parking lot as teams can’t have visitors at the hotels.

“I wanted to abide by the rules, but I also wanted to see my mother’s face and that was a good thing for me and her,” Williams said.

Monday night: Suns-Wizards postgame

After Washington’s 128-107 win, in which it led by as many as 32 points, Beal, the NBA’s leading scorer, was asked about returning to action after missing Saturday’s game against the Heat.

“The last couple of days, 48 hours, has been crazy,” Beal said. “Just having to stay away from everybody. Kind of quarantining myself for the last couple of days. The positive is I’ve been testing negative. That’s a good thing, but they’ve been still taking precautionary measures to make sure I’m quarantining, wearing a mask around the guys and taking an extra test, I think, a day. It’s been a little shaky but it’s what we got to deal with.”

When Frank Kaminsky III returned to Phoenix after Sacramento waived him, he missed the season opener due to health and safety protocols.

He talked then about having to have two negative tests in a row to be cleared.

“It’s really just testing,” Kaminsky said Christmas Eve when asked what protocols he had to go through to play. “You’ve got to get a couple of negative tests in a row. If I would’ve known I was going to get picked up that fast, I would’ve just kept testing those couple of extra days in between, but I didn’t. So I had to prove a couple of negative tests.”

Based on that, Beal took the necessary steps to play Monday.

Tuesday evening: Wizards-Jazz postponed

The Suns had already canceled Tuesday’s scheduled “pro day” which is when players get individual workouts.

So about 30 minutes before the Hawks had their media availability after practicing in Phoenix, the NBA announced that Wednesday’s Utah-Washington game at Capital One Arena had been postponed “because of ongoing contact tracing with the Wizards, the team does not have the league-required eight available players.”

That raised

Hawks.

“I think every minute and every hour and every day is going to be an adjustment,” Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce said after Tuesday’s practice. “Obviously this has been the toughest week since we’ve started as you’re seeing games postponed.”

As of Tuesday night, four games were postponed this week.

● Monday – New Orleans at Dallas.

● Tuesday – Boston at Chicago.

● Wednesday – Orlando at Boston.

● Wednesday – Utah at Washington.

“We’re preparing as if we’re playing like we always do,” Pierce said Tuesday. “We’re trying to be as diligent as we possibly can and control what we can control. If something happens, it’s out of our control. If the game goes on, we’re going to do whatever we can to win.”

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