The idea for the eight non-Orlando-bound NBA teams to get some face time is heating up.
The NBA is “closing in on signing off on” a bubble in Chicago for those eight teams, including the Golden State Warriors, to have mini-camps and games against other teams, ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan reported and Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted.
Wojnarowski tweeted that the NBA is hoping for the camps to take place in September.
In June, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said he wanted time for the team to work together as a group.
“We definitely need to get our team together for a period of time. I don’t know for how long, but we definitely need to be together and have some practice sessions,” he said at the time.
Doing so would not only help their own development, but offset the advantage that the 22 teams participating in Orlando will receive.
With training camps for the 2020-21 season not scheduled to begin until Nov. 10, the Warriors would go eight months without organized play.
The 22 teams competing for a playoff spot in Orlando would get time to work as a group in the interim.
“Given that 22 of the teams are going to be allowed to do so for minimum of a couple of weeks practice and a couple weeks of games while the rest of us are not part of that, the league is sensitive to giving us the space that we’re going to need,” Kerr said.
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Creating a bubble would help ensure that players don’t venture out and risk exposure to the coronavirus, but it’s vastly more complicated than simply allowing organized, full-team activities over summer.
Commissioner Adam Silver said that he thinks testing protocols in the Orlando location will make it safer to play as a group than on individual sites.
“I am absolutely convinced that it will be safer on this campus than off this campus because there aren’t many situations that I am aware of where there is mass testing of asymptomatic employees,” Silver said about Orlando, according to Reuters.
The result of the 22-team tournament could play a major role in whether the Chicago one is a go.
The NBA will need to make sure their precautions in Orlando work. If the season gets cancelled or an unexpected number of players catch COVID-19, the league may have to reconsider what to do about the bottom eight teams.
Golden State would also have to decide whether the whole team would show up.
While it would be beneficial to get practice in as a group, stars like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green may refuse to be quarantined, likely away from family, for a handful of camp experiences and scrimmages.
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