NBA Season Off to a Bumpy Start

By Konrad Gonzalez, Staff Reporter

ALONZO ADAMS/USA Today Sports

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and its players knew the upcoming season was never going to be perfect and early on teams are already starting to show signs of trouble.

Players contracting COVID-19 and contact tracing led to the benching of multiple players for each team and forcing teams to play with eight players (instead of the typical fifteen). Games have been postponed and will continue to be if a team can’t have the minimum eight active players required in uniform, a scenario that has already happened and seems to be lurking for more teams moving forward.

“I think we are prepared for isolated cases," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said during a press conference. "In fact, based on what we’ve seen in the preseason, based on watching other leagues operating outside a bubble, unfortunately, it seems somewhat inevitable. We’re prepared for all contingencies.”

The Houston Rockets had a game postponed because they didn’t have enough available players to meet the minimum requirement. The Philadelphia 76ers also played just seven players in a Jan. 9 loss to the Denver Nuggets.

The Miami Heat was another team who also didn’t have enough players for its recent game against the Boston Celtics, who barely had enough players itself, forcing the postponement of the game.

On Monday, Jan. 18, the league postponed two more games: New Orleans vs. Dallas and Chicago vs. Boston.

“It’s starting to get janky," Orlando Magic forward Aaron Gordon said. "I’d be cool with a bubble if it was in the Bahamas or Hawaii and we got to bring our family/wife or girlfriend.”

Silver made it very clear that the league won’t skip the line or pay for its players and staff to get the COVID-19 vaccine early. The NBA will deal with non-ideal circumstances all season. That’s the price of playing in a pandemic. The league, the teams, and the players know that.

“The concern is not COVID,” 76ers Head Coach Doc Rivers said. “The concern is injuries because guys are playing so many minutes because we don’t have enough guys. I’m looking at our stat sheet, we had one, two, three guys plus-40 (minutes) and couldn’t be avoided. Now, we play again in two days and then we play again. That’s my concern with this, we have to be very careful how we navigate next week.”

Despite these unfortunate circumstances, the main takeaway is that league protocols are working as well as they can and most teams aren’t being affected by COVID-19.