The game between the Wizards and Bucks that was scheduled to be played on Friday in Milwaukee has been postponed, the NBA announced tonight (Twitter link).
It’s the sixth consecutive postponement for the Wizards, who haven’t played since January 11. The team was cleared to return to the court to practice on Wednesday, but remains significantly shorthanded.
Deni Avdija, Davis Bertans, Troy Brown, Rui Hachimura, Ish Smith, and Moritz Wagner are out due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols, while Thomas Bryant (ACL) and Russell Westbrook (quad) are sidelined due to injuries, leaving just eight available players on the roster (Twitter link).
According to the NBA’s announcement, the game is being postponed due to the number of unavailable players for the Wizards, contact tracing affecting players on the roster, and the club’s lengthy layoff from practicing.
As Fred Katz of The Athletic wrote earlier tonight, Bradley Beal and the Wizards had been planning to lobby for a postponement of Friday’s game, since they felt that potentially playing with the league-mandated minimum of eight players after not practicing for the last week would result in a high risk of injury for the active players.
The next game on Washington’s schedule is Sunday in San Antonio. The hope is that the Wizards will have enough available players – and enough practice time between now and then – to be ready to play that game.
The NBA has now postponed 17 contests this season. The full list is here.
Did the NBA not do a taxi squad situation like the NHL? Yeah the Hurricanes, Stars and Caps have had issues (though the Caps haven’t had any games cancelled… yet), but this seems like the thing that might be solved with a taxi squad… or it would at least help to mitigate the number of might help the number of games missed. Just a thought.
Milwaukee won’t be making any BUCKS off Friday’s game !!
I guess Washington won’t be able to capitalize on the opportunity…
The Bucks are going to have to PACK it in and move to the next game. Seems like this is becoming a NATIONAL issue.
These are some cheesy jokes
When are they planning on making up these games? Are they? Washington is not likely to be in playoff contention, but these postponed games could easily affect the playoff seeding or even playoff entrance of the opponents. The NBA has basically given back all of the goodwill from their brilliant bubble plan in record time.
Change the stupid 10-day contract requirements already, or the hardship provision. They could’ve signed players and had them tested and cleared by now.
Now the Bucks won’t have to play back-to-back nights. Who’s the real winner here?