NBA basketball is officially back. There will be games — albeit meaningless ones — played for the first time on Wednesday since March when team scrimmages begin at 3 p.m. ET.
Along with those games come new social distancing guidelines the NBA is having its follow do while playing games.
The NBA is letting these teams play against one another on the court, but when it comes to being on the bench and huddling during timeouts? They can’t be within six feet of each other.
The league is spreading out the chairs around the bench area to make sure they aren’t.
Here’s what a new NBA bench looks like. Players and staff will be widely spread apart. pic.twitter.com/DwVcbwM7Ex
— Kyle Goon (@kylegoon) July 21, 2020
That’s not all, though. They’re also having players and coaches huddle up with “timeout chairs” when there’s a timeout called. These are moveable chairs players can stand around or sit on when timeouts are called.
And they’re cleaned after each and every timeout.
Sources: The NBA has informed teams that they are installing “Timeout Chairs” during games:
– Movable chairs to court so players and coaches can huddle, but players must stand/sit around chairs apart from bench
– Chairs cleaned by team staff at end of each timeout— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 22, 2020
Generally speaking, these are all fine measures to take. But right here they feel useless.
These players will be sweaty and bumping into each other for 48 minutes. Keeping them spaced out in chairs on the bench does absolutely nothing in the way of true social distancing.
It’s understandable that the league would want to limit player contact, but the only way to do that is by not actually playing the games and that’s clearly not going to happen.
It’s cool that basketball is back. The league is right to try and keep their players as safe as possible.
But these policies tell us the NBA doesn’t believe it’s safe for these players to sit next to each other, but at the same time it’s safe for them to play full games against one another. And that’s totally ridiculous.
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