Any player who leaves Orlando’s “bubble” environment will have to quarantine at least 10 days and have two negative tests for COVID-19 in order to participate again, Shams Charania of The Athletic tweets.
The same protocols will be employed if a player tests positive while in the Disney World complex, according to Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer.
The restrictions for players exiting the bubble should serve as a deterrent from straying outside the complex except for emergency and family reasons. If a player was caught off-campus for any other reason, they could jeopardize their team’s postseason aspirations and risk the ire of their teammates and coaches. They would have to miss multiple games, along with being confined to their rooms for 10 days or more.
With so many teams heading to Orlando, the NBA will try to stagger their arrival times for safety reasons, O’Connor hears. All teams are tentatively scheduled to arrive between July 7-9, followed by a coronavirus test and a 36-hour quarantine. The season is scheduled to restart on July 31.
Interestingly, the NBA is hopeful of using a saliva mouth swab as an alternative to the nasal swab if it proves reliable, O’Connor continues.
Prior to arriving at Orlando, teams would conduct two-week training camps with COVID-19 testing likely to occur every other day, O’Connor adds.
For more details on the return-to-play plan, click here.
Staggering arrival times of teams coming in on different planes so they can get on a basketball court and have constant physical contact is interesting…
Was thinking the same thing
Make sense to not have multiple teams and travel parties all jammed into the hotel lobbies at the same time while checking in.
Staggering them makes sense, imo.
yeah I also thought it sounded kind of silly BUT the one thing I can think of that it could prevent is a case where one team arrives and has several players positive with the corona virus. Then instead of everyone being at risk of being infected it would be limited to one team — and thus hopefully would allow things to continue moving forward instead of halting everything right then and there.
Games will occur after league-managed testing, so are safer. The plane ride over is probably more dangerous than the games!
The union prefers saliva swabs but I hope the union gets disappointed by the league choosing the better sinus swab.
Agreed. There are times you defer to preference, and others where you need to do what is safest. This falls under the latter.