Who’s who on the roster?
Amid omicron surge, teams frequently turning to little-known players
NEW YORK — The Spurs visit Barclays Center on Sunday, and for South Texas expatriates in Brooklyn, this presents quite an opportunity. Anyone willing to part with $1,690, plus fees, can sit right behind the visitors’ bench.
That’s close enough to hear almost everything Jaylen Morris says to teammate Tyler Johnson, and if a Spurs diehard is really lucky, he finally might get to brush shoulders with with the immortal Anthony Lamb. Years from now, those treasured memories of the franchise’s Big
Three, 10-day contract edition, surely will linger.
But if whoever buys those tickets isn’t quite so devoted and needs a little help identifying which silver-and-black living legend is which, checking the game program is an option. To be sure, it’s probably better than asking the silver-haired gentleman a few seats over.
“I don’t even know half their names,” Gregg Popovich joked — or maybe not? — about his lineup on Friday.
Such is the absurd state of the NBA during omicron, which is proving Jerry Seinfeld’s old bit about sports fandom applies now more than ever. When the coach is introducing himself to his small forward during pregame warmups and when the sixth man can play for and against the same team in one week, the uniform can become the only thing recognizable about the experience.
“You’re actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it,” Seinfeld said, and that was almost three decades before a pandemic led to unprecedented levels of roster churn.
The rooting, of course, continues, even if some people doing it start to ask themselves why. For much of the past month fans have paid Broadway prices for understudy performances, and it’s enough to wonder what brings them to the arenas in the first place.
To get the full NBA experience, does one need to witness the best players in the world plying their trade at an elite level? Or is it just about knocking back a few brews in the mezzanine and cheering like crazy for whomever is wearing the home laundry?
Lately, it’s been much more of the latter. Before 2021-22, the highest number of players to appear in a single NBA season was 540.
In the month of December alone, NBA teams combined to use 544.
Thanks to teams like the Spurs, who are dealing with an outbreak of positive COVID tests a bit later than others in the league, that number continues to grow. To comply with the NBA’s roster rules, they signed Morris, Lamb and Johnson to 10-day deals during their current road trip, and all of them were in action Friday during a loss at Philadelphia.
Also receiving significant minutes against the Sixers were comparative longtimers Joe Wieskamp and Devontae Cacok, rookies who began the season on two-way contracts. They were supposed to spend the bulk of their time in the developmental G League. On Sunday they’ll be chasing James Harden and Kevin Durant.
It isn’t ideal for anyone, and, at times, it turns the NBA season into a farce. But the league decided it was willing to live with it, and if there’s any good news, it’s that most teams are running out of new names to add to their injury reports.
Less than halfway through the season, about 300 players already have been placed into health and safety protocols. Without taking anything for granted, there are realistic hopes that few of those players will have to sit out twice in one season.
Eventually, the guys in the NBA uniforms should look familiar again. It’s interesting, though, that COVID-related turnover in other sports might last longer. Partially because of a pandemic NCAA rule change that allowed many college athletes who played in 2020 to gain an extra year of eligibility, record numbers of them are trying to find spots at new schools.
Per 247Sports, there were more than 1,500 FBS football players listed in the transfer portal on Jan. 5. With 130 schools in FBS, that means an average of more than 10 players per team are looking to leave.
So before long, fans of college programs might start to feel like they’re rooting for clothes, too. But chances are they’ll get used to it, like fans always have, and they’ll keep finding reasons to embrace whoever fills the jerseys.
And for $1,690, plus fees, who knows? Someday, they might even get an introduction.