The Basketball Tournament is winning COVID-19 fight, but NBA has bigger bubble battle
Boeheim’s Army was leading the Men of Mackey early in their quarterfinal matchup at The Basketball Tournament on Tuesday when former Kings forward Donte Greene committed a personal foul that led to a TV timeout.
As ESPN cut to an aerial shot of the eerily empty streets and concourses around Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, play-by-play man Chris Vosters took a moment to share a word from their sponsors.
“TBT is presented by Puma basketball,” he said. “By Air Force Reserve: Explore your opportunities with Air Force Reserve. And COVID testing for TBT is brought to us by Vault Health. Vault Health specializes in cutting-edge personalized healthcare for men. Learn more at vaulthealth.com.”
Life, entertainment and promos have changed, but basketball is back!
Basketball is back?
Basketball is back and it’s brought to you amid a global pandemic that has changed the way people live, work and play all over the world. The Basketball Tournament is giving everyone a glimpse of what the NBA might look like when it returns in the weeks ahead at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida, where the Kings arrived Wednesday evening.
The Kings posted photos of the team’s departure as players, coaches and staff boarded their flight Wednesday. General manager Vlade Divac, coach Luke Walton, De’Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Nemanja Bjelica and Marvin Bagley III were all seen wearing masks as they moved from a bus to an airplane on the tarmac at Sacramento International Airport. Next stop: Orlando.
Some of the Kings’ men admitted they aren’t sure what to expect on the NBA campus as they resume their pursuit of the eighth seed in the Western Conference playoffs, but The Basketball Tournament might offer some clues.
TBT is a 24-team, single-elimination tournament featuring former NBA players, college alumni and international imports with a $1 million prize for the winning team. Former NBA players include seven-time All-Star Joe Johnson, former Kings guard Malachi Richardson, Jarrett Jack and Tony Wroten.
All games are being played without fans at Nationwide Arena, where ESPN is broadcasting to 197 countries around the world. The arena seats 20,000, but curtains, banners and signage are being used to obscure the empty seats, creating a more colorful, less cavernous environment. Only about 30 people are visible on television, including players, coaches, referees and event staff.
There are some key differences in the NBA’s bubble plan — which feels far more precarious than this experiment in Ohio — but reports from Columbus offer both reason for optimism and cause for concern. Five teams have been sent home after players tested positive for COVID-19, but the number of positive tests dropped to zero after five days of testing, a feat NBA Commissioner Adam Silver hopes to achieve in Florida.
COVID-19 testing at TBT
Since the tournament began Saturday, sideline reporter Jennifer Hale has provided daily updates on TBT testing procedures and results, including screenshots of her own test results and a graphic showing how the positivity rate inside the bubble has dropped since teams began to arrive June 29.
According to TBT, 34 of 450 players (7.5 percent) produced positive test results during at-home testing before teams converged on Columbus. During a period of isolation upon their arrival, six of 370 (1.6 percent) tested positive. The positivity rate dropped to 0.6 percent on the third day of testing and 0.3 percent on the fourth day.
On the fifth day, there was no trace of the virus inside the bubble. Two hundred sixty-four peopled were tested that day. Not one tested positive for COVID-19, although one team, Eberlein Drive, was sent packing before its first game after a player tested positive the day before.
“The good news is the safety protocol is working,” Hale said during the television broadcast. “If you look at those numbers, obviously the number of positive test results have dropped every day. The highest number was the at-home test, and that means you weren’t even allowed to come here on site to Columbus, so although we hate to see any team go home, the good news is the safety protocol here in the bubble, it is working. It is keeping players, officials and staff safe, and I know I speak for everybody when I say we’re keeping our fingers crossed that Eberlein Drive is the final team that we have to send home.”
NBA has bigger bubble
TBT is a single-elimination tournament consisting of 23 games over 11 days. All teams are staying at a hotel reserved entirely for TBT teams and staff. If one member of a team tests positive for COVID-19, the whole squad is disqualified. TBT had the foresight to bring in four alternate teams, all of which were needed to replace teams that were disqualified due to positive tests.
The NBA plans to play 88 seeding games, up to four play-in games and 15 best-of-seven playoff series — as many as 197 games — over a span of 74 days. Teams will stay at one of three Disney hotels. Upon arrival, all 37 members of each team’s travel party will be required to quarantine in their rooms until they pass two COVID-19 tests at least 24 hours apart. Players who test positive will be removed and isolated, but their teams will continue to compete.
The Kings, Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets, Miami Heat, Los Angeles Clippers, Phoenix Suns and Brooklyn Nets all closed their practice facilities due to positive test results in the past week.
Silver anticipates a number of positive results in the initial rounds of testing as teams arrive. He is prepared to keep playing through some isolated cases, but any kind of outbreak might force the NBA to shut down its season for a second time.
“We won’t be surprised when they first come down to Orlando if we have some additional players test positive,” Silver told Fortune Brainstorm Health during a virtual conference Tuesday.
“What would be most concerning is once players enter this campus and then go through our quarantine period, then if they were to test positive or if we were to have any positive tests, we would know we would have an issue. ... We would know that there’s, in essence, a hole in our bubble or that our quarantine or our campus is not working in some way. So that would be very concerning.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
