The NBA has postponed the Grizzlies‘ next three games, the league announced in a press release. Memphis is being affected by the NBA’s contact tracing protocols and, as a result, has a number of players unavailable.
The affected games are as follows:
- Friday, January 22 at Portland vs. the Trail Blazers.
- Sunday, January 24 at Memphis vs. the Kings.
- Monday, January 25 at Memphis vs. the Kings.
The Grizzlies had been scheduled to play in Portland vs. the Blazers on Wednesday night, but that game had to be postponed as well.
As of Monday, Jonas Valanciunas was the only Grizzlies player who was ruled out due to the league’s health and safety protocols, with Jaren Jackson Jr., Justise Winslow, and Jontay Porter all sidelined due to injuries.
While the NBA’s contact tracing protocols have affected more players since Monday, it doesn’t sound as if those players have been asked to complete week-long quarantine periods yet, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. Wojnarowski tweets that the COVID-19 exposure within the Grizzlies’ organization may be isolated, and that the league is “erring on the side of caution” by deciding to not have the team play its next few games as scheduled.
Chris Herrington of The Daily Memphian adds (via Twitter) that the Grizzlies, for now at least, have just one active case of the coronavirus.
Following this series of postponements, the Grizzlies’ next game (vs. the Bulls) is set to be played on Wednesday, January 27 in Memphis. At that point, it will have been more than a week since the team was first affected by contact tracing. If there are no additional positive tests or other setbacks, that game shouldn’t be in jeopardy.
The NBA has now postponed 20 games in 2020/21, as seen in our tracker. The growing number of postponements will make it a challenge for certain teams to play a full 72-game season.
Nba has to expand the rosters for this season
Expanded rosters won’t do anything except make more positives. What they need to do is have taxi squads of 3-5 players which are “bubbled” away from the rest of the team that can be activated whenever players on the main roster go down.
There would have to be roster rules. Must be an NBA vet. Must be willing to sequester away from the world for the duration of the job. Pay would be less than minimum salary, but still more than a regular job, and would increase to min salary if they needed to be activated. Salary cap/luxury tax would not apply to these players even when they are activated.
I don’t know if it would even be allowed via the CBA, but this could easily be an agreed upon exception. Plus it would give 90-150 former NBA players jobs.
Where is the money coming from for all these new salaries? How are they enforcing people sequestering themselves? Creating a bubble somewhere that they have to pay to staff?
Once again an idea that is nice in theory but I’m not clear how it works in real life.
Bubble boys!
Newp