Bryant, Payton test positive for COVID-19

Team is short 5 players at the NBA restart in Orlando

Bradley Beal and Davis Bertans aren’t the only players the Washington Wizards are missing in their first days at the NBA’s bubble in Florida. Guards Gary Payton II and Garrison Mathews as well as center Thomas Bryant did not travel with the team to ESPN’S World Wide Sports Complex near Orlando on Tuesday.

Bryant and Payton tested positive for the novel coronavirus and Mathews didn’t join the team for personal reasons, multiple people close to the players confirmed. It is unclear whether any of the three players will join the Wizards in Florida at a later date.

Asked in a virtual news conference for an update on the players absent from practice, Coach Scott Brooks declined, citing the league’s collective bargaining agreement.

Bryant and Payton are far from the only NBA players to test positive for the virus — on July 2, the league announced that 25 of 351 players have tested positive since June 23. Wizards players and team staff members were tested daily in the days leading up to their departure for Orlando. Players who made the trip were tested twice in the first 36 hours after their arrival in the bubble and were permitted to leave their hotel rooms only after both tests came back negative.

Several NBA teams closed their practice facilities in recent weeks after members of their parties traveling to Florida tested positive.

With Beal (shoulder injury), Bertans (chose to sit out) and Bryant staying home, Washington could be without three starters when it opens its eight-game regular season-ending stretch July 31 against Phoenix, making its path to the playoffs even more arduous. The Wizards (24-40) are 5½ games behind the eighth-seeded Orlando Magic and need to get within four games of the eighth seed to force a play-in tournament for the final playoff spot.

Bryant averaged a team-high 6.8 rebounds and 12.1 points before the season was interrupted in mid-March. Beal and Bertans averaged a combined 45 points. In Mathews’s limited minutes this season, he averaged 5.4 points and1.3 rebounds. Payton averaged 3.9 points and 2.8 rebounds.