How Heat is navigating NBA’s COVID-19 situation: ‘I can’t believe that we’re back here again’
As COVID-19 impacts a third straight NBA season, the Miami Heat is among the teams feeling the effects of the ongoing pandemic.
Heat starting point guard Kyle Lowry entered the league’s health and safety protocols on Saturday and is expected to miss a handful of games. Miami was also without, among others, head athletic trainer Jay Sabol and assistant coaches Caron Butler and Chris Quinn in Sunday’s win over the Orlando Magic because of COVID-19 issues.
Sabol and Butler are away from the team after entering protocols, and Quinn was in the FTX Arena parking garage watching a stream of the game as he waited for his COVID-19 test result that turned out to be negative. But with multiple positive tests around the Heat, there’s a possibility more could arise in the coming days because of the virus’ intense level of contagiousness.
“You can’t even refer to a textbook on this. You have to take each day as its own inevitable challenge,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said ahead of Tuesday’s matchup against the Washington Wizards (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun, NBA TV). “You just try to focus on the task at hand and get everybody committing to control what you can control. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have external anxiety about the way the world is, the way the business is different now. But you have to compartmentalize it, allow yourself those moments to be human and then will yourself back just to focus on the task at hand.”
With Lowry only the second Heat player to enter protocols this season after two-way contract wing Caleb Martin tested positive for COVID-19 earlier this month, there are other teams around the league that have dealt with more virus-related issues recently.
By Monday morning, the numbers of NBA players in protocols was up to 124, according to the Associated Press. That number fluctuates quickly as players test in and out of protocols.
“It’s crazy. I can’t believe that we’re back here again,” Heat team captain and veteran forward Udonis Haslem said. “I knew the numbers were going to spike. But it’s kind of scary to see that we’re back here again. But reading everything that we’re not going to lock down and we’re going to stay in the season, that’s encouraging. But it’s scary.
“We’re not going to live our lives in a bubble, though. We got to move around, we got to engage. But we got to be safe, we got to try to enjoy our holidays. But there’s a responsibility and accountability out here right now to try to be safe. But I don’t know if there’s much you can do. The way it’s spreading like wild fire, I don’t know. Who knows? I might have already had it and didn’t even know it. It’s going around.”
Every Heat player has been vaccinated and the belief is that most of the roster has received a booster shot.
In an important development, the NBA and National Basketball Players Association agreed to shorten the quarantine period from 10 days to six days for NBA players and coaches who test positive for COVID-19. According to a memo sent to teams on Monday, players and coaches can now clear quarantine after six days if COVID-19 testing data shows they’re no longer at risk to be infectious.
Players and coaches can also still clear protocols if they return consecutive negative PCR tests at least 24 hours apart.
Under the old guidelines that required a minimum 10-day quarantine period, Martin was in protocols for nearly two weeks and missed seven games before making his return in Sunday’s win over the Magic. He said he felt “a little bit tired” for the first few days after testing positive, but he was “good” the rest of the way.
Under the new rules, Lowry’s six-day quarantine runs through Friday after he entered protocols on Saturday. That sets up a potential return this weekend if he’s found to no longer be infectious.
“It’s difficult,” Haslem said of the pandemic’s impact on NBA players. “I think one thing people don’t know about athletes and basketball players and anybody who has longevity and been around this and had success in it, you have a routine. You have a system. You’ve build some kind of consistency. I think that’s the toughest part with the testing and everything that’s going on is that there’s not much consistency.”
More rule changes have been implemented to help teams add depth to its roster when facing a COVID-19 outbreak. The NBA and Players Association came to an agreement earlier this month on rules allowing teams to sign a replacement player to a 10-day contract for each positive COVID-19 case it has on its roster without those players counting toward the team’s salary cap or potential luxury tax payment.
The Heat took advantage and signed forward Zylan Cheatham from the G League last week as a COVID-19 replacement for Martin, and Cheatham has remained on the roster as a replacement for Lowry.
The league and Players Association also recently agreed to eliminate the 50-game limit for two-way contract players, allowing them to be available for every regular-season game.
“That part of it is probably not unlike what we’ve had in the past. We’ve always had an available player list,” Heat general manager Andy Elisburg said of adapting to those modified rules in the middle of the season. “You’re always looking at potentially needing to add somebody. I think you may have to do more of it. There may have to be more moves you would make. But going through the motions of making sure you have other lists and making sure you’re prepared to bring in players, that’s something that we’re accustomed to having to do.”
COVID-19 forced the 2019-20 season to be finished in a Walt Disney World bubble, and players were forced to follow strict health and safety guidelines while testing daily last season. The start of this season felt close to normal with fully vaccinated players not forced to undergo regular COVID-19 testing, but protocols have tightened again with cases spiking around the NBA and country.
Enhanced COVID-19 testing began Sunday and will last through Jan. 8. Players will be tested on game days and practice days except for those who received their booster shot 14-plus days earlier or recently recovered from the virus, and coaches and team staff will also need to be tested on game days and practice days during this two-week period.
Masks also now need to be worn in almost all circumstances during team activities — including travel, when on the bench during games, in the locker, weight, and training room, when receiving treatment and during team meetings.
“In terms of trying to examine the seasons, it has been like one long season,” Elisburg said. “You sort of have this before COVID world. Then from March 2020 through now, it feels like it has just been one long run-in season. This year has certainly been a lot more normal than previous years have been. In some ways, I felt like the bubble was a more normal season than what we had last year. Last year, I thought was much harder than the bubble was.”
There’s a group of young players on the Heat’s roster who don’t even know what a normal NBA season is. Heat guard Tyler Herro has yet to experience a season that hasn’t been impacted by COVID-19 after he was drafted by Miami in 2019.
“I haven’t really had a normal year yet in my career, so just living in the present,” Herro said. “It is what it is for now. Hopefully sooner than later, I can have a normal season.”
The hope is life, in general, will soon return to normalcy. But until then, coaches and players around the NBA will continue to navigate the challenges of playing games during the world’s evolving COVID-19 situation.
“A global pandemic is not something that you thought would be a part of the gig, but it is,” Spoelstra said. “I think obviously you can’t come in in an absolute panic every day. I think it’s part of our jobs as leaders to over-communicate, allow everybody and anybody to feel what you feel. That’s part of being human. But then also try to find some solutions, compartmentalize and still find a way to get everybody on the same sheet of music to focus on the task at hand.”
▪ Along with Lowry, the Heat also ruled out Bam Adebayo (thumb surgery), Dewayne Dedmon (knee sprain), Markieff Morris (whiplash) and Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) for Tuesday’s game against the Wizards.
P.J. Tucker is listed as questionable after missing the last three games with left lower leg nerve inflammation.
This story was originally published December 27, 2021 at 12:21 PM.
