Three Knicks employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting the team to temporarily shut down its practice facility while the building gets a “thorough cleaning,” the team announced on Tuesday night in a press release.
The NBA recently allowed teams to begin conducting group workouts at their facilities, though players who are participating in those group activities must return daily negative coronavirus tests. There’s no indication that the Knicks employees who tested positive for COVID-19 were players. However, the temporary shutdown of the team’s facility is an early sign of the challenges the league will face in the coming weeks as teams all over the U.S. ramp up for the 2020/21 season without the safety of a bubble.
Here’s more on the NBA’s two New York teams:
- Larry Greer, who was an assistant coach in Phoenix last season, is joining the Knicks as an advance scout, tweets Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. Marc Berman of The New York Post first reported that the Knicks may hire Greer, whose brother Andy Greer joined the team as an assistant coach in the summer.
- The Nets have added another coach to Steve Nash‘s staff, announcing (via Twitter) that they’ve hired Royal Ivey as an assistant. Formerly a Knicks player development coach, Ivey is good friends with Brooklyn forward Kevin Durant.
- Alex Schiffer of The Athletic takes an in-depth look at another Nets assistant, exploring why Amar’e Stoudmire is getting into coaching and why he should be a good fit in Brooklyn.
- News that the 2020/21 NBA season will start next month comes at a good time for Nets owner Joe Tsai, according to Brian Lewis of The New York Post, who writes that Tsai recently lost over $1 billion in net worth due to the impact of new China regulations on the value of his company Alibaba.
Tsai is no different from his Beijing masters.
He’s a commie at heart, but gets rich from cheap labor.
Dude, what? Why turn this political? He moved to American at 13 and graduated from Yale and is a Canadian citizen. He also just donated $50 million to social justice issues here in America. My point is he is human like the rest of us, and is more educated and philanthropic than both of us. Other NBA owners get rich from cheap labor too but you had to make these comments cuz he’s from Taiwan?
Which ones? I think most got rich from real estate. Alibaba is like Amazon about selling but the sourcing is less hidden.
So what about Alibaba? How does that effect you or the NBA? And if you want an answer to your question here are two, Robert pera of the grizzlies owns ubiquiti which makes almost all its stuff in china and Ann walton of nuggets is the daughter of Walmart owner which operates and makes millions of products there.
Greer is a great guy. Glad to c him get that job. Phoenix should of kept him