As of Thursday, there have been seven NBA players that have tested positive for COVID-19, aka the coronavirus, with Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Christian Wood, Kevin Durant, and three unnamed Nets players all having contracted the virus — although five of the seven have been asymptomatic.
The league has defended the testing of various teams, with the NBPA pointing criticism at the federal government for the overall lack of testing resources, noting that players are in the “super-spreader” category as young people with contact with many people and regularly travel. The league, now on hiatus, has shut down activities and made the move on Thursday to close all team facilities and ban players from international travel in an effort to slow the spread and limit contact players have with others.
The importance of that is, while eight teams have been tested, there are 22 that haven’t and the likelihood that others are asymptomatic but carry the virus is pretty high. On Thursday afternoon, the Denver Nuggets announced someone in their organization had tested positive, keeping it intentionally vague on whether that was a staffer, coach, or player, but it brings the number of teams with confirmed cases to four, all of which are spread across the country.
An update from our organization.#MileHighBasketball pic.twitter.com/YmOaj7829W
— Denver Nuggets (@nuggets) March 19, 2020
We’ll keep you updated in the event it becomes public knowledge who this is, but regardless, hopefully they are able to recover from this soon, all while those monitoring them are able to avoid catching the virus.
