Tag: orlando bubble

Who are best injury replacement shooters Boston could sign in Orlando?

If a player gets hurt or catches coronavirus once teams are in Orlando, the pool of players to replace them will be limited, and these are the best shooters available.

The Boston Celtics and 21 other teams finishing the 2019-20 NBA season in at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Lake Buena Vista, Florida will need to tap into a limited pool of players if anyone ends up getting injured — or worse, comes down with the coronavirus behind the pandemic.

Teams will be limited to players who have signed with an NBA or G League team this season or last, and any team who decides to go this route will have to keep the player they are replacing out for the rest of the season.

So, with a very deep roster with every slot occupied by a player as good as most of the options they’d be replaced by, the chances of the Celtics dipping their toe in this particular pool is slim, but real.

Should the need arise, it’s possible the position they play and skillset they possess will dictate what the Celtics will be looking for in a replacement.

But, if a player who doesn’t spend much time in the rotation ends up with a high ankle sprain six games into the restart, it might make more sense to replace them with a player possessing skills Boston currently lacks.

And what skill does Boston need more than bench shooting?

To that end, the Celtics Wire put together a shortlist of the best shooters likely available to play in the ‘Orlando bubble’ — and no, Jamal Crawford isn’t among them (the veteran guard recorded just a 33.1 % rate from 3-point range over the last two seasons).

So if not Crawford, then who?

Let’s take a look at the six best options, noting their 3-point percentage at their last stop in the NBA.

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Report: some players uneasy with NBA return due to protests, pandemic

A faction of players led by former Boston Celtic Kyrie Irving have issues resuming the season under the current plan.

There is a faction of NBA players who are not comfortable with a return to action at the end of July, as much due to the risk such a resumption presents in a pandemic as its optics create in the midst of ongoing racially-motivated civil rest, reports Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes.

Turner Sports’ Taylor Rooks relates that a group of 50 players who recently held a conference call to discuss potential responses to this situation plan a much larger meeting of 150 or so players to clarify what sort of stand they should take.

Former Boston Celtic Kyrie Irving has been a “driving force” behind these calls, according to Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck, who relates players want more freedom of movement.

Beck also shares that at least one agent he has been in conversation with in the issue relates up to two-thirds of the top-40 players in the league would refuse to play under the current plan.

Haynes relates players are upset they did not have more of a voice in such an important decision, made by the National Basketball Players Association executive committee and its board of representatives, rather than by a rank-and-file vote.

Additionally, the emergence of the movement springing from the killing of George Floyd has also raised significant concerns about the appearance of a majority-African American league sacrificing three months of their lives in quarantine to entertain a majority white audience with players.

“What message are we sending by agreeing to this during this time?” an anonymous African American player told Haynes. “We’re out here marching and protesting, and yet we all leave our families in these scary times and gather to perform at a place where the owners won’t be at?”

“What type of sense does that make? We’ll be going backwards. That place isn’t that magical,” they added.

Irving in particular has taken on a leadership role in this faction, who are reportedly hesitant to push back against some of the stars of the league who have gone on record to support a return to action with precautions in place.

For now, there is an agreement pending that would see players able to opt out of the return if they feel compelled to stay home for any reason, though that player would not be paid a portion of their salary due them if they did opt out of the return.

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Shams: NBA ‘planning to allow … up to 17 players’ per team at Disney

The Athletic’s Shams Charania reports the NBA is planning to allow up to 17 players at the ‘Orlando bubble’ location to finish the season.

The Athletic’s Shams Charania reports the Boston Celtics and other teams invited to finish their 2019-20 season in Florida will likely be allowed to to bring 17 players — including two-way players — to the Orlando-area ‘bubble’ location the NBA has chosen to resume play at.

While it is unclear if the two way players will be allowed to play in the playoffs without a regular, rostered player being injured, it does suggest that at minimum both center Tacko Fall and point guard Tremont Waters will be allowed to travel with the team for the completion of the current season.

Two way players may be able to participate in the postseason afterward without a player being injured, but for now such details are unsettled, with the NBA and National Basketball Players’ Association still ironing out the details on who can participate when.

Earlier in the week, the Celtics Wire reported on that negotiation process, which will likely at minimum allow two way players of a team to be part of the pool of players available to teams to replace injured players on the roster.

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Celtics, 76ers may both want to avoid a first-round meeting equally

It turns out that the Boston Celtics may want to avoid the Philadelphia 76ers as much as the reverse is true.

While it’s about as close to a consensus as one can get in the Boston Celtics media sphere that the Philadelphia 76ers are probably the team the Celtics would least want to face in the first round of the 2020 NBA playoffs, it seems the feeling may be mutual.

Philadelphia Inquirer NBA writer David Murphy believes the Sixers ought to do their best to avoid the Massachusetts franchise at the end of the resumed 2019-20 NBA season as well.

The reasoning? It’s a pretty compelling case, when you get down to it — Boston, when healthy, is a very dangerous team.

Despite their record against the Celtics, Murphy is emphatic that Philadelphia do all it can to avoid the Celtics.

“Their first order of business will be winning enough games to avoid facing the Celtics in the first round,” he began. “This might seem like a counter-intuitive place to start, given that the Sixers have won three of their four meetings against Boston this season while losing five of seven to the Heat and Pacers combined.”

This is of course a fair point, but the logic is sound. Why?

“Heading into the shutdown, they’d won 17 of 23 games. During that stretch, they were 8-1 against Eastern Conference opponents and 3-0 against the Heat, Sixers, and Pacers. They also beat the Lakers, Clippers, Thunder, Trail Blazers and Jazz. Five of their seven losses came against Western Conference playoff teams.”

It’s hard to say what version of either team will be suiting up for postseason action by the time the playoffs actually arrive. Both teams have players with injuries that can flare up suddenly and without notice that take time to calm down again.

Both teams have seen chemistry — or its lack — affect play.

It’s conceivable either team could hit their stride and make quick work of the other, depending on how a lot of hard-to-predict factors end up playing out. So, in at least that sense, it may make as much sense for the 76ers to want anyone but Boston as much as the reverse holds true.

“Take away the Celtics’ three losses to the Sixers and they are 6-3 against the East’s Top 6,” notes Murphy. “There’s an argument to be made that they are the greatest threat to the Bucks.”

“Avoiding them in the first round should be a priority,” he argues; no argument here.

Many Celtics fans are inclined to agree given the risk a first-round exit at the hands of Philadelphia represents; such a loss would be a significant black eye for either franchise.

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Woj: ‘faction of players’ asking if season restart ‘a good idea’

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports there are at least some players who question the wisdom of restarting the season.

If an unnamed faction of NBA players concerned with the safety of returning to play in the midst of a pandemic get their way, they and anyone who shares their concerns won’t have to suit up until things are safe again.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that there is a group of players who doubt the safety of resuming play in the so-called ‘Orlando bubble’, even with the league’s detailed safety protocol of daily testing and quarantine periods.

Several dozen such concerned players participated in a conference call on the subject over the last day, and it would not surprise to hear Boston Celtics fourth-year shooting guard Jaylen Brown as being one of them.

While there is no specific reporting tying the Georgia native to the faction, he is one of several vice presidents of the National Basketball Players’ Association (NBPA), and has publicly asked for information on the long-term impact of coronavirus on player health.

Brown also penned an opinion piece on the viral pandemic’s tendency to lay bare systemic inequities in the U.S in the Guardian in April.

It is far too early to know how asymptomatic infection — or even full-blown COVID-19 complications — can be expected to impact players long-term, but there have been many anecdotal reports of a concerning loss of lung capacity, nerve damage and other negative outcomes that are justifiably worrisome.

To that end, the NBPA and NBA are expected to come to an agreement that lets players sit out with no penalty save for a portion of wages lost for choosing not to play, reports Wojnarowski.

There are also reports being relayed to retired NBA veteran Matt Barnes that some players on at least the Los Angeles teams are not comfortable returning to play until the ongoing racial justice issues behind the flood of protests across the U.S. and world are addressed.

Barnes co-hosts a podcast with another retired basketball player, Stephen Jackson — a personal friend of George Floyd, whose killing by a white police officer helped spark the protests in question.

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Re-doing The Athletic’s Orlando bubble expansion draft for Boston

The Athletic came up with an ‘expansion draft’ idea that has each of the 22 teams headed to Disney borrow a player from uninvited teams — this is our take on who the Celtics should take instead of Clint Capela.

The novel format of the end of the 2019-20 NBA season and subsequent playoffs are unlike anything that has come before in the history of the league, a necessary response to the pandemic that upended the basketball status quo.

And with that novel format has come a number of creative ideas on how that plan could be further tweaked to deliver maximum entertainment appeal in a moment of extreme duress.

To that end, The Athletic’s staff put together a ‘mock expansion draft’ that would see 22 teams who made the so-called ‘Orlando bubble’ cut-off be allowed to ‘draft’ one player from the eight teams whose season ended.

While there are a host of reasons why this would never happen in real life, it’s still an appealing thought experiment. But the Athletic staff — for whatever reason — decided Boston ought to draft now-Atlanta Hawks big man Clint Capela.

As the Celtics Wire has discussed more than once on why Capela’s game is far from an ideal fit in Boston’s style of play, nor does he provide a skill the team has much need for.

So who would be a better option, then?

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Celtics have ‘most talented staring five’ in NBA, per one East exec

While the Boston Celtics may have issues with their bench rotation, it’s not a stretch to say they have one of the best starting fives in the NBA.

It seems the expectations are high again for the Boston Celtics as they join 21 other teams in the ‘Orlando bubble’ to resume the season.

After similarly lofty expectations crashed and burned in the 2019-20 NBA season, it might be better to be wary of any sort of coronation of the Celtics being truly elite.

But, that hasn’t stopped at least some of the Celtics opponents from looking at the team as one of the primary obstacles in the East for any team hoping to make the Finals.

Speaking to Heavy’s Sean Deveney about the new hierarchy of the NBA’s Eastern Conference coming out of the league-mandated suspension of games, an anonymous East executive had some high praise for Boston.

“When they’re healthy, it’s the most talented staring five in the league, top-to-bottom,” they related. “They have not had a chance to get themselves on the floor together, though. They had some really good stretches but if they’re all there and together, they’re versatile on both ends of the floor and they can play matchups probably better than anyone in the East.”

If true, this bodes well for the Celtics coming out of a long break. While injuries may have been unable to have treated while in lockdown, the rest most certainly helped.

And with several more weeks before training begins in earnest, there will be time for treatments as well.

Add in that no team will have a home court advantage, and the picture for a deep playoff run for the Celtics is beginning to look plausible with the right matchups early on.

While the Milwaukee Bucks are the behemoth to beat, and the Toronto Raptors and Philadelphia 76ers tough outs as well, a healthy Celtics starting five might just be able to get past any of these teams in a postseason series with some luck.

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What will the NBA/Disney ‘Orlando bubble’ arenas and complex look like?

We’ve been hearing about the plan to save the season for the Boston Celtics and the rest of the NBA for some time — but where will the games be held?

When it comes to the NBA’s plan to resume the 2019-20 season, we know where we’re headed — to Walt Disney World; their ESPN Wide World of Sports complex, to be specific.

But what do we actually know about the location?

Those among us with family playing youth sports for any length of time in the state of Florida may have already seen the sprawling, 220 acre compound, or at least a part of it.

It’s equipped to handle hordes of games in multiple sports, simultaneously if need be. It has fields or facilities for baseball, competitive cheering, lacrosse, soccer, softball and volleyball in addition to basketball, and for the sport we’re focused on, it can do so in abundance.

Google Earth/New York Times
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Breaking down the Celtics’ potential first-round playoff opponents

The Boston Celtics may be able to put their thumb on the scale in the final game of the season when it comes to who they draw in the first round — but will it matter?

The Boston Celtics finally have a clearer picture of how their 2019-20 season will end, and with it, who they might face in the playoffs.

Virtually certain to end up locked into the third seed of the East with the Toronto Raptors three games ahead of Boston, and the Miami Heat 2.5 games behind them, the Celtics are further bolstered by a relatively favorable regular season schedule in their eight remaining games.

That schedule will end with a game against the Miami Heat — one of the three teams they will end up facing, depending on how the regular season shakes out, so they may have a chance to influence who they’ll face in the playoffs if they believe there’s an advantage of one over another.

The other two teams include the Indiana Pacers and Philadelphia 76ers, the Sixers and Pacers in a statistical tie with the Pacers holding the tiebreaker and thus the fifth seed, and Miami ahead of both in fourth place in the East with a two game lead.

The team they’d face in the first round if the season ended today — the 76ers — are arguably the team they’d want to face the least, with only one game of four played against them in the 2019-20 season going Boston’s way.

Still, with Philadelphia’s size having proven a problem in the past, there’s a chance the lynchpin of their starting unit — center Joel Embiid — will not be in the best of shape given the long layoff.

Would that be enough to offset the risk that the Sixers might still have Boston’s number, especially given that same hiatus gave Philly’s second-best player Ben Simmons time to heal a balky back?

That would depend on the alternatives.

Miami has shown flashes of being a dangerous team, but hasn’t proven an especially difficult challenge in the two games Boston has played them — both wins.

The Pacers have also been a tough if superable opponent in the regular season to date, with the Celtics splitting the two contests in close games.

Since then, Victor Oladipo’s quad has had time to healt further, and Malcolm Brogdon’s tendonitis time to calm down while they lost wing Jeremy Lamb for the season with multiple injuries to his lower extremities.

For now it seems that Philly is the team to avoid, simply based on past experience and that franchise having the most to gain from rest of Boston’s opponents despite their struggles elsewhere.

And for a franchise more concerned with banners than deep playoff runs, the team they’d play in the second round may matter as much to how the season’s end is viewed longer-term.

For now, that’s probably going to be the Raptors, with a very small chance of the Orlando Magic, Brooklyn Nets or Washington Wizards advancing from the 2/7 bracket.

Given the intense games the Celtics have had with Toronto this season, Boston may want to go out of their way to avoid the 76ers. But, we’ll likely need much if not all of the rest of the regular season to see which of the Pacers and the Heat is the better option to hope for on Boston’s end.

And perhaps try out some unusual lineups in that final game against the Heat to close out the season, should the urge arise, in a totally unrelated observation.

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NBA working on G League, player eligibility for ‘Orlando bubble’

What happens if a player gets hurt or sick in the ‘Orlando bubble’? The NBA and NBPA are trying to sort that out, among many other things.

The NBA and National Basketball Players’ Association are negotiating a mechanism for replacing players who test positive for COVID-19 or are otherwise seriously injured during the resumed 2019-20 season and subsequent playoff report ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks.

The single-site location in Lake Buena Vista, Florida was selected out of a concern for safety in the midst of the pandemic that forced the suspension of the season in the first place.

Still, it is unlikely that there will be no positives tests among invited players, to say nothing of the coaching and other staff needed to host the season resumption.

Teams will need to have a means of replacing players who test positive for the virus, and at present there is an assumption there will be no limit on teams to replace players heading into the training camps and remaining regular-season games.

There may be a limit on the pool of available players to replace them, however.

There will also likely be a limit on such players having had to have been in the NBA, G League or a training camp contract this season to be eligible to participate, meaning no international players or players who have not signed with a team in one of the above capacities at some point this season.

There may be provisions introduced which will allow two way players like Tacko Fall and Tremont Waters participate fully, as well as a requirement of any player who is replaced due to a positive COVID-19 diagnosis to be ineligible to return to action.

Pushing back against the notion of allowing two way players to play is that it could add up to an additional 44 players and their families once players are allowed to bring family members to the “bubble” campus.

The league has its hands full with a monumental balancing act between maintaining the future fiscal solvency of the league and its many global projects and being a responsible business in terms of protecting the health of its employees and partners.

No enviable task, that the NBA has even gotten this far is a testament to the strength of relationships between the league, it’s players and its business partners. With luck, this and many other issues facing the league before the restart will be resolved favorably for all affected parties in the coming weeks.

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