Two New Positives Among Players In Last Week Of COVID-19 Testing
Of the 455 players tested for the coronavirus between February 17-24, two returned confirmed positive tests, the NBA and its players’ union announced on Wednesday in a press release.
After a COVID-19 outbreak among Spurs players contributed to an increase in positive tests last week, when five were reported, the league appears to be trending back in the right direction this week.
In the NBA’s latest injury report on Wednesday, 10 players were listed as out due to the health and safety protocols, but some of those players – including several Spurs and Jrue Holiday – reportedly tested positive in previous weeks, while others are believed to be affected by contact tracing and haven’t tested positive at all. As such, it’s not clear which two players were diagnosed with COVID-19 this week.
The league figures to be extra vigilant about trying to avoid positive tests after the All-Star break, since it may be difficult to make up any additional postponed games during an already-crowded second half. Teams like the Grizzlies and Spurs are scheduled to play 40 games in 68 days — if any of their contests are postponed, it will be tricky to squeeze them into the schedule without pushing back the end of the season.
Spurs Have Five Players Under Protocols; DeRozan Also Out Wednesday
The NBA postponed the last four Spurs games due to coronavirus positives and contact tracing. There’s now more clarity on which players are in the league’s health and safety protocols, as well as hope that their next scheduled game against the Thunder on Wednesday will be played.
The Spurs announced on Monday that Rudy Gay, Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell, Quinndary Weatherspoon and Derrick White remain under the league’s protocols and are not with the team. That group will not travel to Oklahoma City. Additionally, DeMar DeRozan will miss the game due to personal reasons.
However, LaMarcus Aldridge has been upgraded to active, according to Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio Express-News (Twitter links). He hasn’t played since February 1st due to a hip injury.
As previously reported, the Spurs on Monday recalled guard Tre Jones and forward Luka Samanic from the Austin Spurs. That would give the team 10 available players, two more than the minimum required to play.
San Antonio practiced on Monday, Orsborn added.
Weatherspoon was the only San Antonio player prior to Monday to be named publicly as being under the league’s health and safety protocols. The games postponed were all on the road — Detroit, Cleveland, New York and Indiana — which means the Spurs will have a busy schedule in the second half of the season. They also have to make up a January 25th postponement, a road game against New Orleans.
NBA Aims To Hold Vegas Summer League In August
The NBA is working toward holding its annual Las Vegas Summer League sometime in early- or mid-August in 2021, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe. The league is still figuring out all the specifics, sources tell ESPN.
The NBA was forced to scrap its 2020 Summer League in Las Vegas due to the coronavirus pandemic — the league was ramping up for its summer restart at Walt Disney World in July at the time the Vegas Summer League would typically have taken place.
The 2020/21 season is scheduled to end about a month later than usual, with the playoffs set to run through mid-July. As such, it makes sense that the NBA would also push back its Summer League dates by about a month. It’s safe to assume there will be a number of strict health and safety restrictions in place for the event, even if the pandemic outlook has improved by the summer.
Within their report, Wojnarowski and Lowe also provide some details on the NBA’s second-half schedule, noting that teams expect to see a draft version either this weekend or sometime next week.
According to Woj and Lowe, the plan for now is to have all 30 teams play a full 72-game slate, even if that requires more back-to-back sets down the stretch for the clubs that have to make up several postponements from the first half.
However, the NBA has acknowledged that if more games have to be postponed during the second half, there’s a chance not every team will be able to play 72 games, per ESPN’s duo. That admission suggests that the possibility of pushing back the start and end of the postseason isn’t currently on the table.
And-Ones: McDonald’s Game, ASG, M. Jackson, S. Kidd
The McDonald’s All American Game for top high school basketball prospects has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic for a second straight year, as Shane Laflin of ESPN writes. McDonald’s will still announce its 48-player roster for 2021 (24 boys and 24 girls) later this month and will virtually honor the class, Laflin notes.
The event has served over the years as a showcase for future impact NBA players. The league’s five most recent No. 1 picks – Ben Simmons, Markelle Fultz, Deandre Ayton, Zion Williamson, and Anthony Edwards – are among the many future NBAers who have been named to the rosters for the McDonald’s All American Game since 2015 alone.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Defending the NBA’s decision to hold an All-Star Game this season, commissioner Adam Silver said on ESPN’s The Jump that the league also faced criticism for resuming play last summer in the bubble and for beginning its new season in December amid the coronavirus pandemic. “It seems like no decisions during this pandemic come without uncertainty and come without risk,” Silver said, per Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “This is yet another one of them, and yet it’s my job to balance all those interests and ultimately it feels like the right thing to do to go forward.”
- Former Warriors head coach Mark Jackson remains interested in coaching in the NBA, but said during an appearance on The Boardroom: Out of Office Podcast that he believes the “narrative” surrounding his time in Golden State has contributed to limiting his opportunities. Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News has the story, including some quotes from Jackson.
- Former Colorado State forward Stanton Kidd, who appeared in four games for the Jazz during the 2019/20 season, has signed with Hapoel Jerusalem through the end of this season, the Israeli team announced in a press release. Kidd, waived by Utah in November 2019, had been playing for OGM Ormanspor in Turkey before making the move to Israel.
Lakers’ Davis Out About Four Weeks, Schröder In Protocols
After initially being ruled out at least two or three weeks when he was diagnosed with a right calf strain on Monday, Lakers star Anthony Davis was reevaluated by team doctors on Thursday and has a new recovery timeline, head coach Frank Vogel told reporters last night.
According to Dave McMenamin of ESPN, the Lakers expect that Davis will miss approximately the next four weeks. That estimate includes the time it would take him to ramp up his conditioning once he’s healthy enough to resume workouts.
“We want to try to put this fully behind him and be conservative with it, just to make sure that it’s fully healed before he’s back,” Vogel said of Davis, who has also experienced Achilles tendinosis in his right leg.
The updated timeline ensures that Davis will remain out for the Lakers’ last seven first-half games and won’t be back on the court until at least a week into the second half, which gets underway on March 10. It will also sideline him for the March 7 All-Star Game, opening the door for another Western Conference player to replace him on the roster if he’s named a reserve, which is likely.
The Lakers figure to lean more heavily on the likes of Kyle Kuzma, Montrezl Harrell, and Marc Gasol during Davis’ absence.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles also had to deal with a hole in its backcourt on Thursday night vs. Brooklyn, as Dennis Schröder was out due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols. Vogel said after the game that he’s not yet sure how much time Schröder will miss as a result of those COVID-19 protocols, per McMenamin (Twitter link).
There have been some instances of players receiving clearance within a day or two if they returned a false positive or inconclusive coronavirus test, or if they were subject to a contact tracing investigation and were determined not to have been a close contact of someone who tested positive for the virus.
However, if the player is determined to have been a close contact of someone who tested positive, he’s generally sidelined for at least a week. If the player registers a confirmed positive test himself, his return timeline is usually at least two weeks or so.
Wesley Matthews replaced Schröder in the Lakers’ starting lineup on Thursday. If Schröder has to sit for a week or two, Matthews, Alex Caruso, and Quinn Cook are among the top candidates to play extra minutes.
And-Ones: Vaccine, All-Star Game, Trade Candidates
A number of the NBA’s top players have expressed reluctance to promote the coronavirus vaccine in league-sponsored public service announcements, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. Some players are wary of receiving the vaccine themselves, apprehensions which are consistent with those in Black communities around the country, Wojnarowski notes.
There are other factors contributing to the “tepid” response to the NBA’s vaccine PSA efforts, according to Woj, who points out that many players are unenthusiastic about doing any favors on behalf of the NBA as the league puts its “largely unpopular” plans for an All-Star Game into motion.
While commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly stated that the NBA won’t “jump the line” for the vaccine, he told general managers on a call on Tuesday that vaccinations for players could be available as soon as late March or early April, per Wojnarowski. Silver also suggested on that call that the NBA may encourage vaccinations – and participation in its PSAs – by loosening the health and safety protocols for those who receive it, sources tell ESPN.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- As has been the case in recent years, the NBA will once again have the top vote-getters for the All-Star Game become team captains and get them to draft their own rosters from the pool of 22 remaining All-Stars, Tim Bontemps of ESPN confirms. Bontemps adds that there’s a chance the “Elam Ending” format could return, given how successful it was last year, but says that hasn’t been officially decided yet.
- Jonathan Wasserman of Bleacher Report identifies six young players who he believes would benefit from a change of scenery and should be on the trade block. Magic center Mohamed Bamba, Celtics guard Carsen Edwards, and a pair of Knicks (Kevin Knox and Frank Ntilikina) are among those on Wasserman’s list.
- In an Insider-only article for ESPN.com, Bobby Marks previews the trade deadline for all 30 NBA teams, examining each club’s most valuable assets, cap situation, and how it should be approaching the trade market.
Five New Positive COVID-19 Tests Among Players Since Feb. 10
The NBA has announced that five new NBA players, among the 454 who have been tested for the novel coronavirus COVID-19 since February 10, yielded a confirmed positive test result.
This tally marks a jump from the last time COVID-19 test results were announced, when just one player among 470 recorded a confirmed positive test between February 3-9. It’s also the first time since January 20 that the league has had a week with more than one new positive confirmed test.
The NBA noted that anyone who “has been identified as having been in close contact to an infected person, is isolated or quarantined.”
Four Spurs players tested positive for COVID-19 this week, prompting the postponement of four San Antonio games thus far due to contact tracing that left the team without the league-mandated minimum of eight players available. At least one of the Spurs players recorded a positive result in a confirmatory test.
Hornets forwards Cody Martin, Caleb Martin, and P.J. Washington all missed action due to the league’s health and safety protocols late last week, though it is unclear if they tested positive, registered an inconclusive test result, or were held out as a consequence of contact tracing.
Per our tracker, 29 regular season NBA games have been postponed so far during the 2020/21 season due to coronavirus-related absences, and a 30th was delayed due to extreme weather in Dallas this week.
Southeast Notes: Hornets, Hayward, Wall, Beal, Vucevic
Originally scheduled to play Chicago on Wednesday and Denver on Friday, the Hornets will instead be off until at least Saturday as a result of coronavirus contact tracing. In addition to having two games postponed, the team faces a number of additional restrictions until the contact tracing process – and further testing – is completed.
As was the case earlier in the pandemic, the Hornets are currently limited to having one player on court in their practice facility, and players didn’t have access to the locker room areas. The club will continue to be restricted to individual player workouts through at least Thursday (Twitter links).
Here’s more from around the Southeast:
- The Hornets raised eyebrows in November by signing Gordon Hayward to a four-year, $120MM deal that paid him like an All-Star, but the veteran forward has made good on that contract so far by playing like an All-Star, says Jared Dubin of FiveThirtyEight.
- After returning to D.C. to face the Wizards this week, Rockets point guard John Wall said he’s done discussing the trade that sent him to Houston, but hopes he’s remembered in Washington for his community work off the court and not just his play on the court. Royce Young of ESPN has the story and the quotes from Wall, who added that he was disappointed not to be able to play in front of Wizards fans in his return.
- Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today takes a closer look at how the Wizards made a clear choice to make Bradley Beal the face of their franchise when they traded Wall last fall.
- As part of the 10-18 Magic, he’s not receiving much national attention, but veteran center Nikola Vucevic is enjoying perhaps the best season of his career, as Bryan Kalbrosky of HoopsHype writes. The 30-year-old remains under contract with Orlando through 2022/23.
Celtics Notes: Ainge, Tatum, Smart, Hayward
Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge doesn’t think head coach Brad Stevens is to blame for the team’s underwhelming play so far this season, telling Dan Shaughnessy of The Boston Globe that he’d assign more responsibility to Boston’s players and to himself.
“We’re not playing with the passion that we need,” Ainge said. “I think that’s on the players. And the players on the team are on me.
“… This is a team that was put together by me,” he continued. “And we’re not playing with enough consistency and urgency, and it’s my job to look to see what we can do to improve the team, but that’s always much harder than improving from within.”
While Ainge stressed that “just changing faces” isn’t necessarily a way to upgrade a roster and improve a team’s outlook, he acknowledged that some roster changes may be necessary. The Celtics will look to avoid falling below .500 when they take a 13-13 record into a home game vs. Denver on Tuesday.
Here’s more out of Boston:
- More than a month after he first tested positive for COVID-19, Jayson Tatum is still feeling the aftereffects of the virus, telling reporters on Tuesday that it “messes with your breathing a little bit,” according to Tim Bontemps of ESPN. “Just running up and down the court a few times, it’s easier to get out of breath or tired a lot faster,” Tatum said. “I’ve noticed that since I’ve had COVID. It’s just something I’m working on. It’s gotten better since the first game I played, but I still deal with it from time to time.”
- When Marcus Smart was diagnosed with a calf strain at the end of January, the Celtics announced a projected two- or three-week recovery timeline. However, as Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe writes, it seems likely that Smart, who said on Friday that he’s still walking with a slight limp, will miss more time than that.
- Having lost 10 of their last 15 games, the Celtics appear to be missing Gordon Hayward and could really use someone to fill the role he played last season, says Jared Weiss of The Athletic.
Multiple Spurs, Hornets Games Postponed After Four Spurs Test Positive
Four Spurs players have tested positive for the coronavirus and the team’s next three games will be postponed, sources tell ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link). The Hornets, who faced San Antonio on Sunday, will enter the NBA’s contact tracing protocols and will have their next two games postponed as well, per Wojnarowski.
The NBA has issued a press release confirming Woj’s report and noting that additional contact tracing is required for players on both teams’ rosters.
The Spurs already had their Tuesday game vs. the Pistons postponed after one positive COVID-19 test was confirmed, so they’ll have a total of four games pushed back in the next week. That includes Wednesday’s contest in Cleveland vs. the Cavaliers, Saturday’s game in New York vs. the Knicks, and next Monday’s game in Indiana vs. the Pacers.
If possible, San Antonio would resume its schedule next Wednesday in Oklahoma City against the Thunder. For the time being, the Spurs remain quarantined in Charlotte, where they’ve been since Sunday, tweets Wojnarowski.
As for the Hornets, they’ll have home games against the Bulls on Wednesday and the Nuggets on Friday postponed. If further testing and contact tracing doesn’t reveal any positive tests on the roster, the team could be cleared to host the Warriors on Saturday.
A total of 29 NBA regular season games have now been unexpectedly postponed due to the coronavirus, as our tracker shows. A 30th game was pushed back to the second half to accommodate another rescheduled game.