12:30pm: The NBA has officially postponed three games on Sunday: Cavs-Hawks, Nets-Nuggets, and Pelicans-Sixers, the league announced (via Twitter).
11:30am: The NBA has decided to postpone tonight’s game between the Cavaliers and Hawks, tweets Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. The contest between the Nets and Nuggets has been called off as well, Woj adds (Twitter link), and others may be in jeopardy, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
The league is still considering whether to postpone tonight’s matchup between the Pelicans and Sixers, Wojnarowski tweets.
The news comes amid another day of numerous players being put into health and safety protocols, including Cleveland center Jarrett Allen and four of his teammates, along with Atlanta All-Star guard Trae Young. Philadelphia lost Andre Drummond and Shake Milton and already has a depleted roster.
COVID-19 forced multiple postponements last season, especially early on, but the league was able to avoid any schedule interruptions until earlier this week when the short-handed Bulls had games postponed against the Pistons and Raptors.
Multiple teams have seen their rosters decimated by the virus over the past few days, so more postponements could be coming. It’s particularly distressing for the league that this outbreak is happening so close to Christmas Day, which is an annual showcase. Among the teams scheduled to play on December 25, the Knicks, Celtics, Bucks, Nets and Lakers are especially short-handed.
Another bubble season?
Why not shut it down for 1-2 weeks? No one can keep track of who’s out and there’s also fairness of competition issue. Besides, nba cant expect fans to pay for half a team playing.
You shut it down for 1-2 weeks guys comeback get tested and there will probably be more cases. Herd immunity is the only option at this point.
Herd immunity via vaccine or infection is the only way. Unfortunately, a lot of people are neither still so this will continue to go on until the magical variant of Covid comes along that has lesser symptoms (think flu) and becomes the primary variant.
Shutting it down is probably on the horizon though as more and more teams are becoming little hot spots.
Should canceled Knicks vs Celtics …..
The NBA is more mad that Trae Young is about to lose them so money cause he is supposed to play on Christmas Day vs the Knicks , and he is supposed to host Day 1 WWE event in State Farm Arena. Hopefully those 2 test come back negative
I think we are barreling towards a postponement of games en masse. The good news with omicron is it doesn’t produce as severe a case as delta. But with it being more contagious I think we are going to run into a lot of the league (not just basketball, I think football and hockey will have the same issue) where we don’t have enough players to field teams.
2 words; forfeit. If you don’t have enough players, too bad. It’s your own fault, not the other teams.
Really only thing you can do. Is create a bubble on your team and contacts. Keep outsiders at a minimum. Or how are we going to get thru the season. I’m so sick of this by now. I just hope they get a handle on it. Was really looking forward to the Christmas games.
The saddest part about all of this is while you have professional sports leagues going through these scheduling nightmares in an effort to mitigate spread, there are large parts of the country—and the world—where folks couldn’t care less about the pandemic.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting folks should stay home, live in fear, wear masks 24-7, etc. And even on our best behavior, the virus would still undoubtedly spread. Regardless, it’s frustrating to see some people or groups going to such lengths to do their part while others refuse to practice even minimal amounts of social responsibility to help out.
Why some folks make it an all or nothing proposition I’ll never know. For whatever reason, you either have to take the virus extremely seriously or not care about it at all when, in reality, there would be so much room left in the middle.