The Whiteboard: NBA fails its first major pandemic test of 2021

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This was all but inevitable. As the NBA showed us successfully, having a bubble for a sports league during a global pandemic can prevent a COVID-19 outbreak. And as the NFL, MLB and college football showed us thoroughly, operating without one, even with health and safety protocols in place, is bound to yield positive test results eventually.

On Thursday evening, about three weeks into the 2020-21 campaign, the NBA was faced with its first major test of the pandemic, and it failed to rise to the occasion as it did all throughout the Orlando bubble and the build-up to that unprecedented event.

As ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported, Philadelphia 76ers guard Seth Curry tested positive for COVID-19, which the team found out about at some point in the first quarter of the Sixers’ game against the Brooklyn Nets. He was immediately isolated from the team, and the 76ers are now quarantining and conducting contact tracing in New York, where it’s uncertain how long they’ll have to remain.

Curry, who missed Thursday’s game due to left ankle soreness, was spotted sitting next to assistant coach Sam Cassell and All-Star center Joel Embiid, who has a 3-year-old son and is now self-quarantining from his family until he’s certain he did not contract COVID-19.

The good news is that Curry was wearing his mask on the bench in accordance with the NBA’s health and safety protocols. He wasn’t playing in the game either, which cuts down on the potential exposure for both his teammates and his opponents on the Nets.

However, even with players being tested twice a day … isn’t it a bit odd results of any kind are coming back after a game has already started? And doesn’t that kind of defeat the whole purpose? While it’s pure speculation to assume that a player who wasn’t suiting up for Thursday’s game may not have put teammates at risk by participating in any type of shootaround, practice or other warmup function for the game … it’s also impossible to know that it didn’t happen, which is why this situation is so alarming.

If there was even one slip-up between Curry and his 11 teammates who took the floor in Brooklyn Thursday night, that means the 11 Nets players who played are also now at risk. And with the Nets flying to take on the Memphis Grizzlies Friday night, that opens up another potential avenue for outbreak. We can say that Brooklyn’s players will obviously be tested again before their next game in Memphis, but didn’t we assume the same thing was going on before this Nets-Sixers contest? You know, the one where we got a positive test result back after the game had already tipped off?

The NBA is extremely fortunate that Curry wasn’t playing in Thursday’s game, that he was wearing his mask on the bench and that he immediately removed himself from the vicinity once the positive test result returned. It’s certainly preferable to seeing Justin Turner get pulled late in a World Series game due to a positive test result and then watching him trot back on the field to celebrate maskless with his teammates.

But the moment Curry’s test result came in, this game should’ve been canceled or postponed. It’s a wonder the Nets and 76ers actually played the rest of this one out, even if Curry hadn’t planned on checking into the game anyway.

Every single positive test presents the possibility of an outbreak, and the concerns there extend far beyond the short-term inconvenience of having to reschedule games. The last batch of NBA test results yielded four positive tests — a relatively low number, but still not the idyllic target the league repeatedly achieved in the bubble of zero. Curry adds another tally to the scoreboard. We can only hope that it doesn’t increase from there with anyone in Philly, Brooklyn or Memphis … and that the league acts more responsibly than it did on Thursday the next time this situation arises.

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