Kurtenbach: How COVID could determine the NBA title — ‘you pray that it
does not influence the way the season ends’
Golden State Warriors playoffs: With COVID on the rise again and the
Warriors getting a scare last week, Steph Curry & Co. are on high alert.
>SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – MAY 7: Golden State Warriors head coach
Steve Kerr coachers his team during Game 3 of a second-round NBA
basketball playoff series at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on
Saturday, May 7, 2022. Kerr tested positive for COVID -19 on Monday
evening. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
>SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – MAY 7: Golden State Warriors head coach
Steve Kerr coachers his team during Game 3 of a second-round NBA
basketball playoff series at Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on
Saturday, May 7, 2022. Kerr tested positive for COVID -19 on Monday
evening. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
By DIETER KURTENBACH | dkurtenbach@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News
Group
PUBLISHED: May 17, 2022 at 9:38 a.m. | UPDATED: May 17, 2022 at 3:37 p.m.
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/05/17/kurtenbach-how-covid-could-determine-the-nba-title-you-pray-that-it-does-not-influence-the-way-the-season-ends/

As Warriors coach Steve Kerr was driving to work last week ahead of Game
4 of the Western Conference semifinals series, his focus wasn’t on the
Memphis Grizzlies, but rather on his cough, his congestion, and the
cases of COVID-19 that had popped up at the team’s San Francisco facility.

The NBA made testing for the disease — once mandatory and daily — an
effectively voluntary practice for vaccinated players and coaches this
season. In February, Kerr had, like so many of us, stopped wearing a
mask when he was at work, on the sidelines. No one actually likes
wearing them.

But Kerr was concerned enough that he put the mask back on for Game 3 of
the series on the first weekend in May.

Then, Kerr tested positive for COVID two hours before Game 4. He missed
that game, as well as Games 5 and 6 — as the Warriors clinched the
series — and has now recovered from the “mild” case and will be on the
sidelines for Wednesday’s start to the Western Conference finals against
the Dallas Mavericks.

“I just felt like ‘I better test,’” Kerr said, recalling his mindset on
the drive to Chase Center. “If I pass this on to the team, I’ll never
forgive myself.”

With new COVID cases rising increasing threefold since the start of
April, this disease offers a new threat to not only the Warriors, but
the NBA as a whole.

It could absolutely determine the league’s champion in June.

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Clippers wing Paul George missed his team’s win-or-go-home play-in
tournament game last month with COVID. George was symptomatic and tested
positive. His team went home.

In the Warriors’ last series against the Grizzlies, Memphis big man
Steven Adams missed the first two games after testing positive for
COVID. Given how well he played once he did enter the fray, one can only
wonder how affected Memphis was by his absence.

Then on Tuesday, the Celtics announced that center Al Horford would miss
Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Heat, as he has
entered the league’s health-and-safety protocols. It’s a blow that will
unquestionably change the complexion of that series.

If Steph Curry or Draymond Green were to test positive in the coming
days, the Warriors’ title hopes would unquestionably turn negative.

That’s why Kerr’s positive test, while it did not create a significant
issue for the Warriors, does serve as a warning.

“This is still something we have to be alert with and protect against
and have precaution in terms of how you’re moving through your day and
who you’re going and who you’re around — how you spend your time outside
this facility,” Curry said. “It’s a very sensitive time … you pray that
it does not influence the way that this season ends.”

COVID cases are increasing across the Bay Area — up more than 40 percent
over the last two weeks in San Francisco where the team plays and many
players and staff live, 58 percent in Alameda County, 85 percent in
Marin County, and 41 percent in San Mateo County.

“It was just kind of my turn,” Kerr said of his stint off the Warriors
bench. “It seems like, last couple of years, practically everybody on
our coaching staff and our team has had it at some point.”

We’ve come a long way since the beginning of the pandemic in this
country — a moment that cannot be officially pinpointed but is often
associated with the NBA and Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert’s positive test
in Oklahoma City, which shut down the league for months.

We are, of course, well past the point of shutdowns and bubbles now.
Arenas are full, after all. But while this latest COVID surge doesn’t
compare to the peaks of the original Delta or Omicron variants in scale
or severity, this latest go-around with the disease is not to be overlooked.

The league postponed 11 games this season, the last being the Warriors’
game against the Nuggets on Dec. 30, when Denver had six players and
three coaches in the league’s health and safety protocols. NBA rules
require eight healthy players to play a game in both the regular season
and the playoffs.

I’m told that the league has no hard and fast rule on postponing playoff
games, outside of the eight-player limit. Given that there are only four
teams remaining, the league can also take a more case-by-case approach,
should a COVID situation arise, looking at things like cycle threshold
values, which can measure how contagious a positive test is.

And while games can be moved — World Series games are rained out all the
time — with millions in ad revenue on the line, the NBA is obviously not
keen to ask its television partners to shuffle their schedules at this
juncture of the season.

“We continue to consult with doctors, infectious disease specialists,
and epidemiologists on COVID-19 cases that arise and are prepared to do
what is necessary to keep our teams and players safe and healthy,” an
NBA spokesperson told this news organization. “That said, we are
comfortable with the current health and safety protocols that we have in
place with the Players Association and are hopeful we’ll be able to
complete the postseason and crown a champion, as we did each of the last
two years, without any schedule changes.”

In short: We’re on it, and the games will go on.

Luckily, postponing games has not proven necessary since the calendar
flipped to 2022, and the league is confident that will not change now.

But the disease can still have a huge effect on these critical games.

And while the Warriors are fully vaccinated — once a requirement to play
games in San Francisco — the current, circulating sub-variants of
omicron have shown an ability to elude vaccines and re-infect those with
natural immunity.

On the court, every athletic action could bring about a negative
consequence. Every drive to the basket carries the risk of a hard foul
or a twisted ankle. The injury threat is omnipresent, especially in
physical playoff games, but it’s mostly compartmentalized to game action.

With COVID on the rise again, there’s an omnipresent, invisible threat
to winning a title off the court, as well.

“So far, so good,” Curry said. “We’ll just try to control what we can
control.”