Feb 6, 2021
Raptors’ impressive win over Nets clouded by COVID-19 protocols
There may be a game or two that better epitomizes the strangeness of this NBA season but Toronto’s win over Brooklyn on Friday is a close contender, Josh Lewenberg writes.
The Raptors couldn’t have played much better. Their offence was explosive and relatively consistent throughout, taking advantage of the Nets’ vulnerability on defence. Their stars, Pascal Siakam (33 points, 11 rebounds) and Kyle Lowry (30 points, five rebounds, seven assists), outduelled Brooklyn’s prized big three – Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden, who combined to score 40 points.
For the most part, it was an entertaining and highly competitive showdown between a team trying to prove that it still has the championship mojo, and another that’s hoping to establish theirs on the fly – on national television in the United States, no less. The Raptors earned full marks for the victory, easily and by far their most impressive of an otherwise disappointing start to the season, but it was hard to fully appreciate it given the circumstances.
The game was played under a cloud of uncertainty and confusion, as everybody – players, coaches, fans and media alike – wondered how a player could go from being in uniform and ready to play to being held out, to getting cleared and then to getting pulled again, all in the span of 90 minutes.
A timeline of events:
Mere moments before tip-off, Kevin Durant was removed from Brooklyn’s starting lineup due to the league’s health and safety protocols. At the time, Raptors head coach Nick Nurse was under the impression that the Nets star had been ruled out for the night. In actuality, he was undergoing contact tracing, and because he remained on the active list, he would be eligible to enter the game if and when he got the green light from the NBA.
At some point during the first quarter, Durant was cleared to play. He checked in with about four minutes left in the opening frame. Early in the third quarter, and after logging 19 minutes, Durant was told that he would have to miss the remainder of the game.
What happened in between? If it was initially deemed unsafe for Durant to start, why was he allowed to play, and then what changed to necessitate ending his night? If he was at risk, or potentially at risk, why weren’t his teammates or the Raptors – the people he had been sharing the court with for the previous hour and a half – also at risk? Why was the game allowed to continue?
If you were confused watching from home, imagine being on the court, or on the bench. Without the use of Twitter, players and coaches had even less information than we did. Nurse didn’t find out Durant was even playing until the Nets forward was getting set to check in. Lowry said they weren’t sure what was going on. Siakam didn’t even realize Durant’s status changes were related to the COVID-19 protocols until afterwards.
“I think there’s always levels of concern, for sure,” Nurse said, following his team’s 123-117 win. “But in saying that you're kind of in the heat of a game and you don't really know what the deal is.”
“It's just kind of the situation we all have to deal with right now,” said Lowry. “We don't know this, that, and the other. And I'm sure [Durant] was doing everything to stay as safe as possible. I don't know. But, we couldn't necessarily worry about that stuff. Hopefully [it] is nothing, and we just move forward.”
Durant, who tested positive for COVID-19 back in March, had missed time last month due to contact tracing. After sitting out all of last season as he recovered from his Achilles injury, and now that he’s finally healthy and building chemistry with Irving and the recently acquired Harden, you can understand his frustration. He’s certainly not hiding it.
“Free me,” he tweeted late in the game. Shortly after, the NBA issued an official statement.
“Kevin Durant has tested negative three times in the last 24 hours, including two negative PCR tests today,” it read. “However, someone he interacted with this afternoon subsequently had an inconclusive test result return shortly before the game. Durant was initially held out of the game while that result was being reviewed. Under the league’s health and safety protocols, we do not require a player to be quarantined until a close contact has a confirmed positive test.”
“During the game, a positive result returned for the person Durant interacted with this afternoon. Once that test was confirmed positive, out of an abundance of caution, Durant was removed from the game, and contact tracing is underway to determine if he was in fact a close contact of the positive individual.”
There are still more questions than answers, and a whole lot of confusion as to who is subject to the league’s contact tracing, and who isn’t. Not only were the Nets and Raptors able to continue playing on Friday night, both flew out after the game and will face two different teams less than 24 hours later, with Brooklyn taking on the 76ers in Philadelphia and Toronto playing the Hawks in Atlanta. Durant will not be allowed on the trip, but all of his teammates and the entire club he just faced are cleared to travel.
The NBA finds itself in a precarious spot. Whether the season has been a success to the point probably depends on your perspective. On one hand, several games have had to be postponed due to positive tests and contact tracing, while multiple teams have been forced to play shorthanded. On the other, they’re more than a quarter of the way into the shortened 72-game campaign, and with enhanced protocols, cases are down around the league.
What’s clear, and what has been clear since the NBA and its PA laid out the parameters for this season, is that the players and team staff are entrusting the league with their safety. With an All-Star Game being planned for next month, and with missteps like the Durant incident in Brooklyn on Friday, that trust is starting to waver, at least for some.
“[Durant’s] been [testing] negative, so I don’t understand what the problem is,” Harden said. “If that was the case the game should have been postponed, I feel like. If we’re talking about contact tracing, he was around all of us. So I don’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to play and then he was able to play and then he was taken off the court. If that was the case we should have just postponed the game. That’s how I feel.”
“That's the biggest thing right now, is safety,” said Lowry. “We all want to do our jobs, and we all want to provide for our families, and also have people working back in the arenas and doing their jobs. We want to continue to push our league and continue to grow our league and our business, but at the same time we have to continue to be safe and understand what's going on and with the variants of the virus. Every day, there's a new something, or a new rule, or a new something that we can't control. All we can do right now is continue to try to be as careful as possible, just continue to be adaptable and be adjustable.”