Remarkably, it’s been 20 days since the Oklahoma City Thunder traveled into the NBA’s “bubble” at its Central Florida campus, and to this point,the league has enjoyed fairly good fortune with respect to its attempt to contain the coronavirus.
On the day that Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins emerged at the epicenter of an outbreak threatening America’s favorite past time, The New York Times’ Marc Stein published a piece from within the Disney campus giving a firsthand account of what life has been like for the NBA’s players.
According to Stein, Commissioner Adam Silver is “cautiously optimistic” about the league’s attempts to continue to contain the virus. Since teams began relocating to Orlando earlier this month, the league has only had two reported instances of players on the campus testing positive for COVID-19, and when the league last announced its testing results on July 20, it reported that no new cases had been diagnosed.
That’s obviously good news.
Silver, however, knows that it’s too early to be celebrating.
“From my standpoint, it’s going very well, and I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re on the right track,” said Silver, the commissioner, who is scheduled to make his first appearance on campus this week. “But I also recognize what we’re doing has not been done before, and the competition is just beginning. The real test will come when players are commingling, playing basketball without masks and without physical distancing.”
Being that — evidenced by the hundreds of daily social media posts coming from players’ accounts — some of those activities are already happening, it’s safe to say that the early returns on the experiment have been positive.
The Thunder will play their third and final exhibition contest on Tuesday when they square off against the Portland Trail Blazers at 6:00 p.m. ET.
With Oklahoma City having won each of its first two contests, like the NBA, the club hopes that its good fortunes continue.