76ers forced to quarantine after learning of positive COVID test during Nets game
The Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets may be at risk of a potential COVID-19 outbreak.
The NBA has been mostly successful with containing a COVID-19 outbreak a few weeks into the 2020-21 season. Now the league faces its first big test in preventing one, and it’s already looking like it’s failed that test.
According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, the Philadelphia 76ers are being forced to quarantine in New York following Thursday night’s road game against the Brooklyn Nets.
The reason? There was a positive coronavirus test revealed during the game, which will now require contact tracing. Per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the player in question was Seth Curry, and the team learned of the positive test near the start of the game.
Sixers guard Seth Curry returned a positive test for the coronavirus, which the team learned of near the start of a loss in Brooklyn tonight, sources tell ESPN. He went to an isolation room immediately, and thereafter left arena separate from team.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 8, 2021
The 76ers and Nets could potentially be at risk
How the Sixers and Nets could still play Thursday night’s game is mind-boggling, especially once the team learned that Curry had tested positive. How many of his teammates had been exposed at that point? And by extension, how many Nets players were potentially exposed to any Philly player who may have gotten it from Curry?
We hate to think in such paranoid terms, but this is the kind of diligence and discipline it takes to contain a global pandemic that’s already running rampant through the United States. After the NBA had so much success with the bubble in Orlando to finish the 2019-20 season, many wondered how it would maintain those lofty standards to prevent the kinds of outbreaks we’ve seen tear through the NFL, MLB and college football.
Apparently, the answer is not much will change from those botched attempts by the other major sports leagues. Playing that Nets-76ers game on Thursday was downright irresponsible, and it should’ve been canceled or postponed as soon as the Curry news was confirmed. Fortunately, he didn’t play in the game, but even if the league somehow gets off easy in the form of zero players contracting COVID-19 from Curry, this is an incredibly bad look for everyone involved in that decision-making process.
Next. Kyrie Irving misses Thursday's game due to personal reasons. dark