Season suspended. Raptors in self-quarantine.
NBA season suspended after player tests positive for coronavirus – CNN
The NBA is suspending its season after a player preliminarily tested positive for coronavirus, the league announced Wednesday.
The news came after the NBA game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder was abruptly postponed on Wednesday night.
Players for both teams were on the court at the Chesapeake Energy Arena in Oklahoma City for warm-ups but were called back to the locker rooms. The NBA said the affected player was not in the arena and the test results were reported shortly before tip-off.
“The NBA is suspending game play following the conclusion of tonight’s schedule of games until further notice,” the NBA said in a statement. “The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic.”
The organization later decided to nix the last game of the night between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Sacramento Kings. A referee assigned to work the game had previously worked a Utah Jazz game, the NBA said.
In a statement, the Utah Jazz said a player on the team tested negative for influenza, strep throat and an upper respiratory infection Wednesday morning.
“The individual’s symptoms diminished over the course of today, however, in a precautionary measure, and in consultation and cooperation with NBA medical staff and Oklahoma health officials, the decision was made to test for COVID-19,” the team said.
The player is in the care of health officials in Oklahoma City, the team said.
“We wish this player a full and speedy recovery, and appreciate the work of health officials in Oklahoma to test a member of the Utah Jazz for COVID-19, as well as their prudent decision to test the entire team at this time,” Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox said in a joint statement.
They added that they are working to identify individuals who have had close enough contact with the player as to have been potentially exposed.
Sources: The Raptors have informed their players to self-quarantine for the next 14 days due to coronavirus situation. Toronto faced Utah and Rudy Gobert on Monday.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) March 12, 2020
Toronto Raptors head coach launches Nick Nurse Foundation to support children's programs | CTV News
Raptors head coach Nick Nurse hopes to leave a legacy in Toronto that goes far beyond basketball.
He officially launched the Nick Nurse Foundation, a charity that will help implement basketball, literacy and music programs for children around the city, on Wednesday night. Nurse was scheduled to perform with Hamilton-based rock band the Arkells at the charity’s launch event with several members of the Raptors in attendance.
“If we could link all those things together, I think we can provide a really neat flow within the music community here, keep teachers teaching, keep instruments turning over, and all those kind of things that I think would be cool,” said Nurse. “One of my goals would be to get these kids to get together and form their own bands and get to go out in front of people and show people what they’ve been working on.
“I just think that then that leads to a whole ‘nother self image, self confidence, a whole ‘nother realm of what they could possibly achieve when they get older.”
It’s not the first time Nurse has collaborated with the Arkells. He also played “Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” at Toronto’s BudStage with them this past summer. Nurse then appeared in a promotional video announcing an Arkells concert at Hamilton’s Tim Hortons Field.
Nurse was happy to continue that relationship on Wednesday.
“I think it’s part of my musical journey a little bit, and just increases some of the neat things that I’ve gotten to do musically,” said Nurse. “I just think that the event tonight is going to be amazing. We’ve got a lot of great performers in here, and we just want it to be super enjoyable. We want it to be something that people want to come to.”
Report: Raptors players told to self-quarantine for next 14 days – Sportsnet.ca
With the NBA suspending its season after a player on the Utah Jazz tested positive for COVID-19, the league is asking their recent opponents to self-quarantine, according to ESPN‘s Brian Windhorst.
The Toronto Raptors are among the teams that have played against the Jazz over the past 10 days and, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the players will have to be in self-quarantine for the next 14 days.
Charania added that the Raptors were also given precautionary tests for coronavirus Wednesday night.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, New York Knicks, Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons also played against the Jazz during that stretch and have been asked to self-quarantine.
According to ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski, Rudy Gobert was tested for the coronavirus ahead Utah’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder and the league was awaiting the results before deciding whether to go ahead with the game. Gobert was reportedly not at Chesapeake Energy Arena on Wednesday, but was with the team in Oklahoma City.
After fans waited 30 minutes for tipoff, the NBA announced that the game was postponed “due to unforeseen circumstances.”
Raptors on terra nova with COVID-19 scare following Rudy Gobert diagnosis – The Athletic
In the wake of Gobert testing positive for COVID-19, and the NBA suspending league play until further notice, those moments, and many others, have been stripped of any humour that was once there. The reporters whose recorders Gobert touched will have to be tested. Gobert’s teammates will have to be tested. Anunoby, and his Raptors teammates, will be tested and perhaps, quarantined. Basketball is a contact sport.
Utah’s game Wednesday against Oklahoma City was cancelled mere moments before tipoff. If Gobert and his fellow teammate, Emmanuel Mudiay, were not feeling well earlier in the day, it is fair to wonder how they came so close to playing before the results of the test were in. The Jazz played seven different teams in the previous 14 days. The United States Centers For Disease Control and Prevention have been recommending a two-week quarantine period for anybody believed to have come into contact with someone carrying the virus. With the possible chain reactions, it makes perfect sense that the league took the action it did. Once Gobert became Patient Zero, all other potential measures were no longer sufficient.
With the exception of the Jazz-Thunder game, the league planned to go ahead with all of Wednesday’s scheduled games before the suspension took hold. However, the Pelicans-Kings game in Sacramento was ultimately postponed in an “abundance of caution” because referee Courtney Kirkland worked Monday’s game between the Raptors and Jazz in Salt Lake City.
'This is surreal': NBA suspends season after player tests positive for COVID-19 | CP24.com
“It’s a very serious time right now,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I think the league moved appropriately and prudently and we’ll all just have to monitor the situation and see where it goes from here.”
Utah’s last game was Monday at home against the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors beat the Jazz 101-92 to wrap up their five-game road trip.
ESPN reported players from teams that played the Jazz within the past 10 days, including the Raptors, have been told to self-quarantine.
The Jazz released a statement saying a player – they did not identify Gobert – tested negative earlier Wednesday for flu, strep throat and an upper respiratory infection. That player’s symptoms diminished as the day went along, but the decision was made to test for COVID-19 anyway. That test came back with a preliminary positive result.
“The individual is currently in the care of health officials in Oklahoma City,” the Jazz said, adding that updates would come as appropriate.
The Thunder said Oklahoma City’s players left the arena a few hours later. ESPN reported the Jazz were able to leave early Thursday morning after being in quarantine for several hours. The Thunder said their players were not tested for COVID-19, and that they are following the direction of the NBA and health officials.
For most people, COVID-19 causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. the World Health Organization, which declared a pandemic on Wednesday, has said people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus was first reported, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 58,000 have so far recovered.
It has been a worldwide issue for several weeks. And now, it has hit the NBA.
“This is crazy,” Cleveland forward Tristan Thompson said on Twitter.
Raptors' Stanley Johnson: Assigned to G League – CBSSports.com
Johnson was assigned to the G League on Wednesday, Blake Murphy of The Athletic reports.
Despite a year full of injuries for the Raptors, Johnson can’t find consistent run. As a result, the organization will opt to again send him to the G League to see the court. He’s played two games with the 905, averaging 25.0 points, 10.0 rebounds, 4.5 assists and 2.5 steals in 33.7 minutes.
After losing their first matchup with the Pacers this season, the Raptors have won three straight, the most recent of which was a 46-point blowout.
On the surface, the Pacers don’t appear to be much of a threat to the Raptors should they meet in the first round, but they’re a well-coached team with a balanced roster that includes veterans who have been in the playoffs before.
The biggest questions for the Pacers are can they get healthy and will Victor Oladipo get up to speed by the playoffs?
The Pacers will be without one of their leading scorers in Jeremy Lamb – he recently suffered a season-ending knee injury – but they’re now dealing with some uncertainty with Malcolm Brogdon, who is week-to-week with a torn left rectus femoris. With only a month remaining in the regular season, there appears to be a real chance that Brogdon won’t return again until the playoffs.
If so, that would impact the second question. After tearing his quadriceps in the middle of last season, Oladipo has appeared in only 13 games this season. He appears to be finding his groove, but the Pacers need both him and Brogdon to be on the same page to be a real threat in the Eastern Conference this season.
Is the 10 games they’ve played with each other to this point of the season enough for them to do that?
The Pacers still have plenty of talent outside of Brogdon and Oladipo. You can’t talk about this team without mentioning Domantas Sabonis, who was named an All-Star for the first time in his career this season with averages of 18.5 points, 12.4 rebounds and 5.0 assists per game. The Pacers also have one of the league’s best shot blockers in Myles Turner, a bonafide scorer in T.J. Warren and a number of sharpshooters in Doug McDermott, Aaron Holiday and Justin Holiday.
Who needs Kawhi? The Raptors are the NBA’s most improved team without him | The Star
Even Toronto’s keen-eyed front office pondered the long-range possibility of a sell-off of expiring contracts. To some eyes, the title defence was over before the championship banner was hung. The conventional wisdom, after all, is that the NBA championship was effectively won via soap opera — that the power of star-player movement trumps the best-laid organizational design. Which may turn out to be true.
Luckily for Canada’s only NBA franchise, an important group of people didn’t see the situation as grimly. Toronto’s players, to a man, clearly saw those exits in free agency as big-stage opportunities.
And eight months on, with the Raptors sitting third in the league standings, two games ahead of Leonard’s Clippers as of Wednesday afternoon, it’s worth asking: Who deserves the bulk of the credit for filling the obvious void? Or put another way: Who exactly is the most improved Raptor?
The image of Pascal Siakam immediately pops to mind. He’s the reigning holder of the NBA’s most improved player award. And he’s expanded his game in ways that go a long way toward explaining why Toronto is on pace to win 59 games — one more than they won with Leonard in town — despite being the league’s most injured squad by a number of metrics.
Before the season began, critics wondered if Siakam’s jump shot was sturdy enough to befit an NBA lead dog. Maybe that’ll still be a question come playoff time. But this season he’s averaging more than twice as many three-point makes as he did a year ago. Two years ago he was a pitiful 62 per cent shooter from the free-throw line. This year he’s making a career-best 80 per cent. Which is one of many reasons he’s being trusted with the ball in his hands and the game on the line.
“Has anyone won the most improved two years in a row?” Mike Malone, the Denver coach, was wondering earlier this month. “This guy just continues to amaze.”
ohn Hollinger, The Athletic’s senior NBA analyst and the former vice-president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies, said Wednesday on TSN’s Toronto 1050 radio that he thinks a potential second-round matchup between the Toronto Raptors and the Boston Celtics would be the best series of the NBA postseason.
“Conference semis, you’re looking at a 2 vs. 3 series against Boston that, for my money, would probably be the best series of the playoffs,” Hollinger said. “I just think that is a fascinating matchup on so many levels and I would really be hard-pressed to pick a winner with much confidence in that.”
The Raptors are currently 46-18, three games ahead of the Celtics in the standings. However, Boston has won two of the three matchups between the teams this year. Their fourth and final meeting will come on March 20 in Toronto.
“I’m really looking forward to that matchup,” Hollinger added. “I hope that’s what we get as the 2 vs. 3 in the East. I just think that would be fantastic.”
When asked about the Raptors’ ceiling, Hollinger said that the team surely hopes to repeat as champions, but it will be tough if they meet the dominant Milwaukee Bucks in a potential conference finals.
“I think [the Raptors are] coming into this with the idea that they’re going to defend their title,” Hollinger said. “Now, there’s a juggernaut in Milwaukee this year that’s going to have something to say about that, and the Raptors don’t have Kawhi Leonard this time around to deal with them. So, I think they would definitely be a pretty large underdog in a conference finals series.”
NBA must answer six pressing questions after suspending season
Q: What happens to those fans who have tickets for suspended games?
A: The Magic announced, “[T]ickets already purchased for a postponed game will be honored when the game is rescheduled. If games are not played or played in an empty-arena, fans will have the option to receive a credit for a future game or a refund.”
Now, decisions made by Magic ownership aren’t necessarily going to be binding for, say, the Knicks’ Jim Dolan or the Nets’ Joe Tsai. But at least there is some precedent.
Q: Will players, coaches and other team and league employees still get paid during the hiatus?
A: While other support staff members’ employment situations vary from situation to situation, players are paid via game checks. No games, no checks. Or, as Portland’s CJ McCollum tweeted, “No games no pay … hope everybody saved properly.”
