When the Raptors charter took off from Toronto Pearson International on Tuesday afternoon, bound for Chicago, there were plenty of open seats.
The team typically hits the road with a travelling party as high as 60, made up of players, staff, executives, medical personnel, team broadcasters, digital staff and sometimes even select corporate partners.
But as the team was trying to get to Chicago for a game against the Bulls scheduled for Wednesday night, the crowd was sparse, numbering just 20, virtually all directly connected to getting a team on the floor.
The odds of the game being played weren’t great, given Toronto had seven regulars already in COVID-19 protocols before the wheels went up.
But that the game wasn’t cancelled already is in keeping with a very clear NBA mandate: the show must go on. The league that halted the 2019-20 season in March of 2020 when a single-player, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz, tested positive was determined to keep its schedule relatively intact even though more than 100 players — more than 20 per cent of the league — have entered health-and-safety protocols in December and counting.
“Frankly, we’re having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now,” Silver said in an ESPN appearance Tuesday. “As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country right now, putting aside the rest of the world, I think we’re finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to for the past several months — and that is that this virus will not be eradicated and we’re going to have to learn to live with it. That’s what we’re experiencing in the league right now.”
[radioclip id=5261964]The reason to keep playing, Silver said, was that with 97 per cent of the league’s players having been vaccinated and a majority having received booster shots (which have been mandated for league and team staff), the risk to players’ individual health has — so far — been minimized. Many players have been asymptomatic — “the only symptom I had was boredom,” said Bulls wing DeMar DeRozan when he returned from 10 days in quarantine — or experienced only mild symptoms.
Given the player’s union has signed off on the league’s plans and the league shares basketball-related revenues with its players evenly, essentially, it was hard to argue with Silver’s position.
There seems to be a path forward for the league to complete its schedule without compromising the well-being of the league’s players or staff, and the NBA is determined to explore it.
But the Raptors were clearly in a vulnerable position — competitively at least — as they headed for Chicago. They were basically travelling to check off a box on the schedule rather than realistically win a game with a roster that — at best — would feature one starter, four reserves and be otherwise filled out with minor leaguers who wouldn’t have the benefit of a practice.
Given the tightly packed nature of the Eastern Conference standings, with one game separating sixth place from 11th, the 10th-place Raptors could have playoff position decided by a game they had no real chance of winning.
The club had done its part to avoid falling into just this kind of situation, but the transmissibility of Omicron — Silver said more than 90 per cent of the cases in the league were traced to the latest COVID variant — was undoing their best intentions.
Even before an outbreak was brewing, and the team had taken measures to try and mitigate it. They had ramped up their testing and were more stringent on masking. Given the Raptors must test more often than other teams due to the border requirements — lab-based PCR tests are needed both going and coming — there was some hope that they could at the very least nip any potential spread quickly.
But Omicron is different. On Saturday night as Toronto was getting prepared to host the Golden State Warriors, they sent Pascal Siakam and Dalano Banton home after pre-game COVID screening. They didn’t practice on Sunday, and Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said they were taking pains to keep the team and the coaching staff as distant as possible.
“Even our staff meetings, we’re doing them differently now too,” he said. “Just again, we’re doing less, we’re doing a little more remote… very small groups, very big spaces, you know, all those things that we used to do, we’re doing again.”
But they were in a losing battle. Their home game against Orlando on Monday was cancelled on Monday because the Magic didn’t have enough players and the Raptors opted not to practice Monday afternoon and instead held individual workouts at OVO Centre. Still Gary Trent Jr. was added to the protocol list. They skipped practice again on Tuesday only to learn that Fred VanVleet and Malachi Flynn were placed in protocols, bringing the total to five. Later on Tuesday — as the Raptors plane was readying to depart — Precious Achiuwa and Scottie Barnes were placed in protocols, while rookie Justin Champagnie was ruled out with what was deemed a non-COVID illness.
Yet with the team having secured five replacement players from the G-League that would meet them in Chicago and with six regular-roster players potentially still available, the charter took off Tuesday afternoon as scheduled.
Upon landing in Chicago there was another round of COVID screening; a PCR test with results to be returned Wednesday morning. With Khem Birch already questionable, having missed 14 games since early November with swelling in his knee and NBA rules requiring teams to have at least five regular-rostered players among the minimum eight players needed to play a game, the chances of the Raptors playing the Bulls were teetering.
Sure enough, Wednesday morning came and it was determined that playing Birch heavy minutes on a dicey knee was a bad idea, and he was ruled out. When OG Anunoby was placed into protocols after the tests from Tuesday afternoon came back, Toronto was down to four regular-roster players with eight in protocols; Champagnie sick; Birch and rookie David Johnson injured and Goran Dragic back in Europe.
The Raptors didn’t have five regular-roster players available so they couldn’t play.
So far none of the Raptors coaches or basketball staff have tested positive, which is something.
The Raptors charter took off for Toronto Wednesday afternoon and the team began its Christmas break a little bit early.
What happens now is more of the same: uncertainty in the face of a highly infectious form of the virus that has turned the world and the NBA upside down for 19 months now.
The Raptors are scheduled to play in Cleveland on Dec. 26, with the team flying out of Toronto on the afternoon of Christmas Day. The Cavaliers had their game Sunday postponed and have been dealing with an outbreak of their own.
There is some optimism that some of the Raptors players in protocol now might be available by then. The league requires players to either be out for 10 days or have consecutive days with negative results from a PCR test. Given the team is 100 per cent vaccinated the hope is that those that are in protocols are largely asymptomatic and can find their way on the floor sooner than the full 10 days otherwise required.
While the team has been linked to five G-League players as part of the league’s ‘hardship’ plan introduced on Sunday, where teams are required to sign replacement players to 10-day contracts to help them make up for roster shortages when two or more regular-rostered players on in COVID protocols, their status will depend on what happens over the next few days. The team hasn’t signed them officially, per sources.
The only thing certain for now is that the Raptors’ Christmas break will be a little bit longer than expected, and somehow, they’re going to have to find a way to squeeze in three more games in the New Year.
The when, what, where and how – like so many other questions – remain to be answered.
