Reserve center Bruno Caboclo is set to rejoin the Houston Rockets at the NBA “bubble” site after serving an extended quarantine period of 10 days, according to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle.
The 24-year-old inadvertently broke quarantine shortly after the Rockets arrived in Florida on July 9, reportedly because he went downstairs to the hotel lobby to ask about getting food (as opposed to calling).
All arriving NBA personnel must stay in their own hotel room for two nights and complete negative COVID-19 tests on different days before they can truly enter the bubble. The policy aims to ensure that no one brings the coronavirus inside the complex from their home markets.
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Players and staff had been well informed of the rule, which Caboclo broke within the first two nights of Houston’s arrival. According to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, Caboclo was unaware of the protocol. As a result, he had to stay tucked away in his Grand Floridian hotel room for 10 days and repeatedly test negative for the virus throughout that time, all while the rest of his teammates on the Rockets practiced without him.
Caboclo left his room during the initial quarantine period, a source said. He was unaware that he was not allowed to do so despite the league informing all players and staff of the protocol. “He should’ve known,” the source said. “It was no secret.”
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) July 13, 2020
Caboclo had played only sparingly after being acquired by Houston at the February trade deadline. In all, prior to the hiatus of the 2019-20 season in March, he played just 28 minutes across five games for the Rockets, typically in mop-up duty once a game had already been decided.
But Caboclo was one of the first Rockets back in the team’s facility once Toyota Center reopened to players in May for individual workouts, and he said he viewed this rare “training camp” late in the regular season as an opportunity to impress the coaches and earn minutes.
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At 6-foot-9 and with a 7-foot-7 wingspan, Caboclo is taller and longer than every current rotation player for the smaller Rockets. Even so, he’s not the type of traditional big man that head coach Mike D’Antoni and GM Daryl Morey have chosen to move away from. Caboclo shot 36.9% on 3-pointers a season ago, and as a 218-pound former wing player, he’s agile enough to defend the perimeter on switches.
In his 34 games with Memphis late last season, which served as Caboclo’s first extended NBA opportunity, he averaged 8.3 points and 4.6 rebounds in 23.5 minutes per game — largely as an athletic center.
Caboclo didn’t stand out in his limited playing time with the Rockets in February and March, but there were some extenuating circumstances to those appearances. First, he was behind the curve when it came to learning his new team and its system on the fly. Second, he was coming off a knee injury that had kept him off the court for weeks.
Bruno Caboclo says he’s learned a lot more about “playing as a center” since his prior stint in Houston, adding that he gained confidence with minutes in the Memphis rotation. #Rockets #OneMission
Bruno says he pays close attention to opposing bigs and how they do things: pic.twitter.com/ygLYkJDPEq
— Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) February 9, 2020
In all, the unforced protocol error led to 10 extra days of quarantine, and that may have cost Caboclo his best opportunity to make an impression. Even so, 10 days still remain until Houston’s regular season resumes on July 31 — and that could give the Brazilian one last chance to turn heads.
Caboclo will be a free agent once the 2019-20 season concludes.
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