When NBA teams began arriving at Disney, the biggest expected hurdle for the success of the league’s attempt at a bubble was going to be the first round of testing and avoiding an MLS-like internal outbreak that has caused the withdrawal of two entire teams due to the virus spreading to 10 and nine players respectively.
The good news was that the NBA’s plan allowed for a longer quarantine period for players after arriving and the hope would be that they’d catch and isolate any cases before teams began practicing together. On Monday, we learned the results of the very first round of testing, as the league announced that two of the first 322 tests from July 7 came back positive and those players had not yet cleared quarantine. As such, they had been removed from the bubble, either to isolate at home or to go to isolation housing.
Of the 322 players tested for Covid-19 since arriving on July 7, two players tested positive, the league announces. pic.twitter.com/MMatWQUbkd
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) July 13, 2020
That seems to indicate the bubble is off to a good start, but now that teams are practicing with each other, the next week of testing will reveal just how well it has done at keeping players safe. The league’s protocols have kept some players at home to await being cleared, like Russell Westbrook who announced a positive test on Monday, and that is an indication that things are working — even given the unfortunate reality that some players were inevitably going to test positive. The hope was that by the time they got to the bubble, they could’ve caught all of the positives — or, at the very least, catch them in the initial quarantine period. Initial testing seems to show that’s happened, and now everyone crosses their fingers that the bubble keeps working as intended.
