” No Passage, place reserved for NBA staff “. It is behind this barrier, in three plush hotels of the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, that the NBA teams and their staff have taken up residence since Friday, July 10. Like the MLS, which relaunched its season behind closed doors Wednesday July 8 on the grounds of Disney World, the NBA will also resume service at the same place from Thursday July 30.
Stopped in March, the NBA will resume in an original format, since only the 22 best teams in the league (out of thirty) have been invited to Orlando. Each will play eight regular season games on site, then the top sixteen teams from the Eastern and Western conferences will advance to the play-offs. The New York Knicks of Franck Ntilikina are among the absent, as are the Golden State Warriors of Stephen Curry. The teams present in Orlando face a cascade of forfeits among the players. Beyond the injured like Kyrie Irving, the leader of the Brooklyn Nets, several players tested positive for the coronavirus before leaving for Orlando, such as DeAndre Jordan, the hub of the Brooklyn Nets, and Russel Westbrook, the star of the Houston Rockets – this last still hopes to join his team by the start of the tournament. Other players will be absent for family reasons, such as Trevor Ariza of the Washington Wizards; while some just don’t feel safe going to Orlando, like Indiana Pacers winger Victor Oladipo.
It must be said that Florida and Orange County, where the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is located, have become the new epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Sunshine State counted plys of 15,000 new cases in the single day of July 12, a record in the United States. MLS was also forced to exclude two teams from its resumption tournament after 19 players tested positive. Disturbing news for the NBA and its commission Adam Silver, who invested one hundred million dollars to keep the recovery safe and successful in the “ bubble “ from Orlando. The players have all been tested prior to departure and upon arrival, and will continue to be tested regularly while in Florida. Beyond the tests, each player and staff member has a thermometer and an oximeter (which measures the level of oxygen circulating in the blood) in their room. Each morning, they must register their data in an application, and complete a questionnaire on their symptoms. “ The NBA continues to be the best at everything it does. I had a lot of questions before I got here, but they do an awesome job “, explained this week at a press conference Austin Rivers, the point guard of the Houston Rockets.
The NBA goes very far in its protocols since it has even set up an anonymous phone line encouraging players to denounce those who break the rules of confinement. ” I don’t know if anyone will really use it, but it’s pretty mean “French Utah Jazz pivot Rudy Gobert said on ESPN on Wednesday (July 15th).. ” At the same time, you want to make sure people play by the rules. But I’m not sure a phone line can really help. It is more about mutual respect, that everyone behave responsibly, and doing it in a spirit of small community. “ This hotline already seems to be working according to Sham Charania, journalist at The Athletic, who explained on Twitter Tuesday July 14 that ” many phone calls have already been made reporting offenses on campus “.
LeBron James, he is present in Orlando. The Los Angeles Lakers star will try to clinch the fourth NBA champion’s trophy of his career, the first with the Lakers he joined in July 2018. He will have to face other favorites, such as the Los Angeles Clippers of Kawhi Leonard and the Milwaukee Bucks of Giannis Antetokounmpo. The first game of the NBA Finals is scheduled for Wednesday, September 30.
