The COVID ravaged Brooklyn Nets will have another game postponed due to the lack of available players.
The Nets had as a many as 10 players appear on the COVID protocols list, including Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. The Nets plight is the highest known number of players with the virus in the sport. Brooklyn needed to have a minimum of eight active players for the game to played; they do not have that number right now.
Thursday’s game at Portland will be the third straight game that Brooklyn has had postponed. They had games against Denver and Washington also suffer postponements.
Overall, nine games have been postponed across the NBA, but Commissioner Adam Silver insists that there is no plan to pause the season the way the NHL did this week in lieu of the virus and the ever spreading Omicron variant.
When asked about the Omicron spread Silver told ESPN:
“No plans right now to pause the season. We have of course looked at all the options, but frankly we are having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now.
“As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country, let alone the rest of the world, I think we’re finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to over the past several months, and that is this virus will not be eradicated, and we’re going to have to learn to live with it. I think that’s what we’re experiencing in the league right now.”
Silver also confirmed that around 97% of the league is fully vaccinated and 65% are boosted. In addition, the data the NBA front office is seeing is that the virus is passing through players with little to no symptoms.
“It seems the virus runs through their systems faster. They become not just asymptomatic but, more importantly, they’re not shedding the virus anymore. That’s the real concern in terms of others. And so we are actively looking at shortening the number of days players are out before they can return to the floor,” Silver said.
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