The NBA is already at Disney World to resume the season on July 30. 22 of its 30 teams have traveled to Orlando to save the $ 2 billion left on the table when the coronavirus stopped the league four months ago. The plan is to play eight regular-season games and the traditional playoffs, with four best-of-seven playoffs. If all goes well, it will end in mid-October.
And parole is important because Florida is now one of the main outbreaks of the pandemic in the United States. Florida was one of the last to close its economy and one of the first to open it. In recent weeks, it began to chain new contagion peaks until it reached a ceiling on Sunday with 15,300 new cases (out of a population of 21.5 million). This Tuesday announced its worst death toll: 132 in 24 hours.
The situation is not so serious in the area where the park is located, but it worries: Orange County, with a population similar to the city of Madrid, announced 1,385 new cases on Saturday, the highest to date. In addition, the league announced this week that 19 other players had tested positive in early July, for a total of 44. Among them, one superstar, Russell Westbrook .
A 'campus' of 170 million
Since the mass testing began in late June, the players have undergone a test every other day, and another two in the two days prior to traveling to Orlando. Once inside the complex, where the teams are spread across three luxury hotels, the players spend a minimum of 36 hours in quarantine until they are negative twice. The protocol, which includes contact tracking systems, will cost $ 170 million.
As they are doing the rest of competitions, the NBA announces the number of cases but not the identity of the players. Some have announced it publicly, such as Westbrook; others are known, such as Nikola Jokic , that he had to stay in Serbia until he overcame the disease; Others are suspected: it took James Harden five days to travel to Orlando.
Of the 19 positives the league announced this week, two were on the Disney World campus, but in both cases they were players who had not yet completed quarantine. The great fear of the league is that one of the hundreds who can already leave their room test positive, because that would mean that the virus circulates within the facilities.
To prevent the virus from entering, or to detect it as soon as possible, players should wear a mask in common areas, measure their oxygen saturation daily, and wear a device that beeps when they are less than two meters from someone outside their circle closest. No player will be able to see his family until the first round of the playoffs ends on August 30.
The NBA is being very strict with the protocol. He has created a hotline to anonymously report those who break the rules and Richaun Holmes , a player for the Sacramento Kings, will have to spend 10 days in quarantine to leave the league perimeter to pick up a food order at home.
The ghost of the MLS
The NBA looks askance at the soccer league (MLS), which has also resumed the season at Disney World and is in serious trouble. Two of the 26 teams (FC Dallas and Nashville SC) have had to withdraw after registering a high number of positives in the squad, two games have been canceled and one had to be postponed up to twice. The last one, this Sunday.
Although the MLS continues, the NBA wants to avoid at all costs a scenario like that. The league is going to spend $ 170 million to control everything that happens within its 'campus' at Disney World, but there will always be a part that is not in their hands. In his last public appearance, Adam Silver acknowledged that the league was watching Florida data with concern, but is determined to end the season.
"On paper the players are going to be safer on campus than it was in part because we are doing tests on a daily basis, but this virus has already put many in place so I am not going to show more confidence than to say that if we continue the protocol, we think it will work, "said the NBA commissioner.
Although the ACB and the basketball Bundesliga have been given as an example, compared to the NBA challenge it is almost from another planet. First, because it will be three and a half months instead of two and three weeks respectively, but especially because the situation of the pandemic in the United States is much more serious.
The country has risen from 700 deaths a day in the past week and in Miami-Dade, the worst affected region in Florida, there are already 48 hospitals with all ICU beds occupied. If the pandemic hit Orange County with the same intensity, the return of the NBA would be in danger.
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