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      Sixers’ Positive Virus Test Challenges N.B.A.’s Health Protocol

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAre the Knicks Back?A Year of Kobe and LeBronMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySixers’ Positive Virus Test Challenges N.B.A.’s Health ProtocolThe Philadelphia 76ers and Nets continued a game even though a player who had been on the bench learned during play that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.Sixers guard Seth Curry was placed in isolation after learning during Thursday’s game against the Nets that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated PressSopan Deb and Jan. 8, 2021Updated 9:50 p.m. ETIn the latest challenge for a major North American sports league trying to navigate the pandemic, the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers remained in New York on Friday to undergo contact tracing and coronavirus testing after one of their players learned during a game against the Nets on Thursday night that he had tested positive.The positive test result was returned while the player, Seth Curry, was on the Sixers’ bench during the first half of their loss to the Nets at Barclays Center. The game was allowed to continue, raising questions about the league’s health and safety protocols as it plays without the restricted setup it used to finish last season in Florida.The Sixers lost, 122-109, and a full evaluation to determine whether Curry had been in close contact with any Sixers players or staff members began in earnest the next morning — after the Nets had flown to Memphis for their next game.The 76ers will need eight players in uniform to go ahead with Saturday’s scheduled 3 p.m. game against the Denver Nuggets in Philadelphia, but it was unclear Friday night whether they would have enough players to avoid the league’s second postponement of the season.With the team still in Manhattan as of the N.B.A.’s injury report at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, seven Philadelphia players (Joel Embiid, Danny Green, Tobias Harris, Shake Milton, Vincent Poirier, Paul Reed and Matisse Thybulle) were listed as questionable because of the league’s health and safety protocols.Four other Sixers — Curry, Terrance Ferguson (personal reasons) and the injured duo of Mike Scott and Furkan Kormaz — have already been ruled out of the game. The Sixers have a 17-man rosterCurry, held out of Thursday’s game with an ankle injury, was removed from the Sixers’ bench and placed in isolation after being notified of the positive test during the first half, according to two people familiar with the circumstances who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details publicly.“An initial positive test received during a game, when a player has already tested negative that day, results in the player’s immediate removal but does not trigger the cancellation of a game,” said David Weiss, the league’s senior vice president for player matters.Before Thursday’s game, Curry had taken two daily coronavirus tests as required by the N.B.A.’s health and safety protocols — one rapid polymerase chain reaction test and one lab-based P.C.R. test.Weiss added: “The testing strategy we have implemented of two daily P.C.R. tests creates a process that aims to identify an infected individual before they become infectious to others. Combined with our data that analyzes contact time and distance during on-court play, our experts believe that the game can safely proceed in these circumstances.”Major League Baseball faced a similar challenge of a positive test result received during competition, in Game 6 of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays in October. The Dodgers’ third baseman, Justin Turner, learned during the seventh inning that he had tested positive, and was pulled from the game before the start of the eighth inning. The game was not stopped then, either, and Turner later apologized for returning to the field to celebrate winning the championship with his teammates.Curry’s rapid test came up as negative, allowing him to be on the bench with a mask, according to one of the people familiar with the situation. The 76ers then received the result of his lab test, which was positive, and took him to an isolated room at Barclays Center as play continued. He left the arena separately from the rest of the team.The Nets still played the Grizzlies, as scheduled, on Friday night. Nets Coach Steve Nash said before the game that he and his players “weren’t aware” of Curry’s positive coronavirus result as they played the Sixers, but he added that since then “the talk or chatter about it amongst our team was pretty minimal.”On Thursday, Curry had been seated on the front row of Philadelphia’s bench in the first quarter against the Nets in street clothes, with the assistant coach Sam Cassell to his right and, for portions of the quarter, Philadelphia’s star center Joel Embiid to his left.After the game, Embiid, who recently became a father, told ESPN that he planned to quarantine from his family until he was sure that he did not have the virus.The Washington Wizards, who played Philadelphia on Wednesday night, played the Celtics in Boston on Friday night. The Celtics announced earlier in the day that three rotation players — Tristan Thompson, Grant Williams and Robert Williams III — would miss that game because of possible exposure to the coronavirus. Other top players in the league have also been in quarantine, including Kevin Durant of the Nets, despite not reporting a positive coronavirus test.Players are required to quarantine for at least seven days if they are exposed to someone who tests positive. If a player tests positive, he could be required to isolate for at least 10 days. Several players have had to quarantine since the season began Dec. 22, but only one game has been derailed: Houston’s season-opener against Oklahoma City on Dec. 23 was postponed when the Rockets could not field the league’s minimum requirement of eight players.The N.B.A. announces the results of the leaguewide coronavirus testing weekly and said Thursday that four players out of 498 tested since Dec. 30 had tested positive. Last week, the league announced zero confirmed positive tests out of 495 players tested.According to the N.B.A.’s protocols, a positive test requires a team to “notify any close contacts of the confirmed positive case of their status and appropriate next steps,” including retesting or quarantine. A player that has tested positive must isolate for at least 10 days or return two consecutive negative tests at least 24 hours apart before he can take steps to return to play, such as working out by himself when no other players are present.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Coronavirus Will Keep Browns Coach Out of Long-Awaited Playoff Game

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccination StrategiesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCoronavirus Will Keep Browns Coach Out of Long-Awaited Playoff GameCleveland announced that Coach Kevin Stefanski, two members of his staff and two Browns players’ positive tests will keep them out of Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers.Browns Coach Kevin Stefanski led Cleveland to its first playoff appearance in 17 seasons, ending the N.F.L.’s longest postseason playoff drought.Credit…Terrance Williams/Associated PressJan. 5, 2021Updated 3:31 p.m. ETThe Cleveland Browns have seen their share of highs and lows over the decades, including the past 17 years, when they won less than one-third of their games and failed to reach the playoffs.Misery turned to elation on Sunday, though, when the Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers to qualify for the postseason for the first time since the 2002 season and end the N.F.L.’s longest playoff drought. The Browns’ championship aspirations took a severe hit on Tuesday when the team said its head coach, Kevin Stefanski, two other coaches and two players tested positive for the coronavirus, the latest additions to a growing outbreak that has hampered the team the last few games.All five people will miss the Browns’ matchup against the Steelers on Sunday night in Pittsburgh. Special teams coordinator Mike Priefer will take over as head coach in Stefanski’s absence. The Browns have shut their training facility in Berea, Ohio, in the meantime.Offensive lineman Joel Bitonio is one of the two players who tested positive. Bitonio has been with the Browns his entire seven-year career, which has included the 2016 and 2017 seasons, when the team went 1-15 and 0-16. Stefanski gave Bitonio, the longest tenured player on the team, the game ball after Sunday’s win. Now Bitonio will miss his first chance to play in a postseason game.“This is just a terrible scenario for him,” J.C. Tretter, a center on the Browns and the president of the N.F.L. Players Association, said after the team’s announcement.The number of players, coaches and staff who tested positive picked up noticeably starting in November as the virus raged through communities around the country. In the week that ended Jan. 2, the N.F.L. said there were 34 new confirmed positive tests among players and 36 new confirmed positives among other personnel. The 70 combined cases was up from 58 positive tests the week before and 45 cases the week before that.Since August, 256 players and 432 coaches and staff have tested positive for the virus. There are at least 6,000 people regularly being tested throughout the league, including about 2,500 players on rosters and practice squads.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      A Timeout for the N.B.A.’s Halftime Performers Is Costing Them Big

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonA Year of Kobe and LeBronThe Warriors Are StrugglingMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Timeout for the N.B.A.’s Halftime Performers Is Costing Them BigThe pandemic has all but shut down the income streams for halftime performers, who typically make $1,500 to $5,000 a show. The emotional toll is high as well.Gary Borstelmann, who is better known as the Amazing Sladek, performed at halftime during the 2019 N.B.A. playoffs.Credit…Mark Sobhani/NBAE, via Getty ImagesJan. 4, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETSteve Max usually spends his winters telling big crowds at basketball arenas to put their hands up and to touch their shoulders and to cover their eyes. Max is a professional Simon Says caller who travels the country entertaining fans at halftime.Or at least that was his line of work until March, when the coronavirus pandemic emptied arenas and rendered his microphone silent. For the past nine months, Max has been at home in White Plains, N.Y., doing what he can to keep busy. In addition to updating his website, he has tried to adapt to these weird times with a nudge from his wife, Linda Harelick.After reading about how an animal sanctuary was making goats available for cameos on corporate video calls, she offered a suggestion: If those goats can make money, so can you.“So I turned my den into a Zoom studio,” Max, who was born Steve Harelick, said in a telephone interview. “I’ve got something on Thursday for Ernst & Young.”A backstage view of Steve Max’s new marketplace now that the pandemic has quieted his Simon Says shows.Credit…Steve MaxA niche industry for halftime entertainers like Max, 58, has disappeared during the pandemic. Though a few N.B.A. teams began the season with limited numbers of spectators — and some are allowing their dance teams to perform in the aisles — none are hiring halftime entertainers. Contortionists, acrobats, Frisbee-catching dogs — they are all biding their time, waiting for the show to go on.Gary Borstelmann, who does a handstand atop a teetering tower of chairs in his act as the Amazing Sladek, has been supplementing his daily hourlong workouts — lots of handstands, lots of stretching — by hauling a couple of his chairs out to the front lawn a few times a week. He knows he needs to stay in shape.“If you saw me practicing, you’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s only balancing on two chairs,’” he said. “But the intensity of six chairs is in my face.”Simon Arestov and Lyric Wallenda Arestov, a husband and wife team that does a balancing routine on a circus prop called the rolla bolla, have had to explain some hard realities to their 3-year-old son, Alex, who often participates in their act’s grand finale.“He sees our costumes because I’m repairing them and making sure everything is ready to go whenever we get the call,” Wallenda Arestov said. “And he’s like: ‘Mom, that’s my costume! When are we going to do a basketball show?’ And it breaks my heart, because he misses it, too.”Beyond the financial impact — halftime entertainers typically make $1,500 to $5,000 a show — the effects of the pandemic have been felt within their community. David Maas, who had a popular act called Quick Change with his wife, Dania Kaseeva, died of Covid-19 in November.“My heart goes out to all my friends who are in this business,” said Jon Terry, a booking agent for halftime performers who is based in Oklahoma. “These are creative people, and in many cases, it’s their sole income. Some of these guys were making six-figure incomes, and you drop that out and there’s no place for them to do anything else.”And they all can recall in vivid detail the day that everything changed.On March 11, Arestov and Wallenda Arestov, who are both 36, were at home in Sarasota, Fla., preparing to travel to New York so they could perform at the Big East Conference men’s basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden — one of about 30 halftime shows they do for the N.B.A. and the N.C.A.A. each year. But that night, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus before a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the phone call soon came from a conference official: The tournament was going to limit attendance. It was soon canceled altogether.Simon Arestov and Lyric Wallenda Arestov, a husband and wife team that does a balancing routine on a contraption called the rolla bolla, often include their 3-year-old son, Alex, in their act.Credit…Courtesy Madison Square GardenAt the time, the couple had a long list of N.B.A. halftimes lined up for the rest of the season. They were also planning to bounce among festivals and circuses during the summer months in their 43-foot recreation vehicle, sometimes performing two or three times a day. On average, they do about 400 shows a year.Since March, the couple has performed exactly four times. Their return after a six-month hiatus came in September at the Juniata County Fair in Port Royal, Pa. They both cried.“I forgot what it was like to be in front of an audience,” Arestov said.They have since performed at a circus in Indiana, at a private event for a hotel and at a Toys for Tots fund-raiser. They have mixed feelings about doing their act at all. They have wanted to do their part during the pandemic, they said, which has mostly meant staying home. Maas of Quick Change was distantly related to Lyric through marriage.For a couple who typically spend about 300 days on the road a year, it has been an adjustment.“I think we’ve watched everything on Netflix,” said Arestov, who estimated they had lost about 95 percent of their income for the year. “We’re trying to stay positive. We can see a light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines, but we’ve been juggling our finances because there hasn’t been a lot of help from the government for our industry.”Borstelmann had long thought he would retire at 65. At 62, he already considers himself — and take a deep breath, here — the country’s oldest daredevil acrobatic hand balancer. There is an element of physical risk that Borstelmann takes every time he does his handstand about 25 feet above center court.“I’m the only one of the halftime performers who actually risks his life, you know?” he said. “If I fall, I’m probably not getting up.”But the pandemic has altered his timeline — and in a surprising way.“Now,” Borstelmann said, “I want to go until I’m 70. I’m not letting the pandemic retire me.”After doing a halftime show at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix on March 7, Borstelmann packed up his Chrysler minivan and made the four-day cross-country drive to Greensboro, N.C., where he was scheduled to perform during the Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament. About 15 minutes after he checked into his hotel on March 11, he got the news that conference officials were canceling the tournament. Borstelmann sat on his bed watching ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and tried to digest what it all meant.“I lost my last 12 contracts,” Borstelmann said. “That hit me hard. My gosh. That’s probably the money that I’m able to save from a whole season after expenses and everything else.”Basketball is Borstelmann’s bread and butter. He does about 40 halftimes a year, hopscotching across the country in his minivan. (He does not trust airline baggage handlers with his custom-built chairs.)But for the past nine months, Borstelmann has been at home in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., with his 90-year-old mother, Grace, and his 33-year-old daughter, Kerri Grace, who returned to Florida after leaving her teaching job in Hong Kong.“I’m a real family guy,” Borstelmann said, “so that’s been a silver lining.”Borstelmann with his parents in 2015.Credit…Sarah Beth Glicksteen for The New York TimesIn his 40 years as an acrobat, Borstelmann says, he has never fallen. He did tear a hamstring in his left leg while doing a forward flip as he made his entrance at an Orlando Magic game in 2017, but he went ahead with his routine anyway — and finished out his season without missing any of his scheduled performances.“I was in so much pain, bro,” he said.He realizes that he cannot do this forever. He will know it is time to step away, he said, when he loses his nerve or his strength and he no longer feels safe. But the pandemic, in its own way, has offered a glimpse at life without the bright lights, and he cannot see himself packing up his chairs any time soon.“For five minutes,” he said, “I’m at center court and I’m connecting with the crowd and I’m the Amazing Sladek. When I can’t do this anymore, I’m just Sladek, man.”In that sense, Max said he felt fortunate. He can do his Simon Says act for another 20 years.“I’m not flipping off tables or pulling any muscles,” he said. “For me, the only exercise is if I have a tight connection in Phoenix, and I have to run from Terminal A to Terminal D.”As a teenager in New Jersey, Max learned to juggle and worked the local circuit doing magic shows. “I would balance stuff on my face — chairs and tables,” he said.The appeal, he said, was bringing joy to people — making them smile, making them laugh. And video calls cannot fully replicate the experience of interacting with a live audience.“I’ve been missing it desperately,” Max said. “I miss hanging out with the mascots. It’s not just a business arrangement with the teams. These people are my friends.”Max has big plans for his post-pandemic return. He wants to break the world record for the largest group of people playing Simon Says at the same time.“I think that’s the perfect time to do it,” he said, “when people are back together.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      With Man City Positives, Premier League's Coronavirus Outbreak Widens

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRory Smith On SoccerThe Premier League Has a Schedule. It Really Needs a Plan.As the coronavirus invades locker rooms and postpones matches, soccer needs to face up to a potential worst-case scenario.Manchester City played without fans for months. On Monday, it couldn’t play at all.Credit…Laurence Griffiths/ReutersJan. 1, 2021, 10:00 a.m. ETOn the face of it, the Premier League’s decision was an easy and an obvious one. Manchester City and Manchester United had finished last season late, thanks to their commitments in the summer’s European competitions.To ensure that both teams would have a similar break between campaigns as all of their rivals, the Premier League decreed that they would start the new season a week later than everyone else. The league’s omnipotent fixture computer had drawn City against Aston Villa and United against Burnley for that first weekend of the season; those two games would have to be postponed.All of this, so far, makes sense. What happens next does not.Knowing that its teams were facing a compacted schedule anyway, the Premier League could have decided that Burnley and Villa might as well play one another on opening weekend. That may have raised some logistical challenges — policing, scheduling — but hardly insurmountable ones, particularly with fans still locked out of stadiums. The benefit, of having only one game, rather than two, to slot in later in a busy year, far outweighed the cost.That is not how soccer works, though, not even in a pandemic. Burnley did not play Aston Villa. The two games from the first weekend of the season have not been made up. It took until Thursday for the Premier League to find a window: They now will be played in the middle of January, five months late.That may seem a trivial issue, little more than a minor misstep, one that can doubtless be explained by the myriad complexities of scheduling a sporting season and will be easily resolved once the field in the domestic cup competitions is thinned a little. And, in some senses, that is all it is.Soccer has made the best of bad situations for months.Credit…Pool photo by Martin MeissnerBut it is also an instructive example of how the Premier League — and elite soccer as a whole — thinks, how pervasive is its belief in its own relentlessness, how delicate and vulnerable this season remains. The simple fact that Burnley did not play Aston Villa on opening day encapsulates soccer’s myopia, and its hubris.The Premier League lost two more games this week. First, Manchester City requested the postponement of its trip to Everton after five of its players tested positive for coronavirus. Fearing a more widespread outbreak — and much to Everton’s surprisingly public chagrin — the Premier League acquiesced. (Pep Guardiola revealed Friday that City will be missing five players who had tested positive when it plays Chelsea on Sunday.)About 48 hours later, Fulham had to make the same request, canceling its match with Tottenham on only a few hours notice; it, too, had recorded a spate of positive test results, and in the interest of public health, it was determined the game should be delayed, despite the unhappiness of noted Instagram influencer José Mourinho.City and Fulham were not the first clubs to be hit by the virus. In November, Newcastle had to close its training facility and skip a game against Aston Villa after an outbreak that has left at least two players with the kind of persistent and debilitating symptoms doctors refer to as Long Covid. Those clubs will, it is safe to assume, not be the last. Sheffield United played its game against Burnley this week despite reporting a number of positive tests at the club.The situation in the Football League, which governs the second, third and fourth tiers of soccer in England, is even worse. In League One, seven of the 12 games scheduled to be played on Tuesday had to be postponed because of coronavirus outbreaks. Five had been missed on Boxing Day, too. There have been calls from some medical departments for a two-week “circuit-breaker” pause to the season to avoid players’ being overloaded by a backlog of matches in the spring.It does not feel as if any of this was especially difficult to foresee. Soccer cannot be blamed, of course, for failing to anticipate the scale of the second wave of the pandemic in Britain (or anyplace else), or for the appearance of a particularly virulent mutation of the virus in the southeast part of England.Fans have adapted to new realities. Leagues should, too.Credit…Pool photo by Paul ChildsBut it should not have required the clarity of hindsight to project that cases might rise in the winter, that the long-anticipated second wave might have some impact on soccer, that the bubbles the sport was relying on to play through might not prove entirely impermeable, that some sort of contingency plan might be needed.And yet soccer seems woefully underprepared for something that should have been wholly predictable. It is not just that there is little room in the calendar set aside to play postponed matches: just three weekends in the English season set aside for teams to make up games they have missed, but only if they are eliminated from the domestic cups first.It is that — as the Premier League confirmed in a statement this week — the subject of what happens if the season is paused, or worse, canceled entirely, has not even been discussed.(It is striking, though perhaps not vastly surprising, that two of the most ardent voices calling for cancellation on moral grounds in the spring, Aston Villa and West Ham, have been quiet this time. It’s almost as if they are keener to play now that they are fifth and 10th in the table, respectively.)To be clear, at this point, there is no reason to believe the season should be curtailed: Soccer has proved, over the last nine months, that it is able to play on. It has not increased the burden on the country’s medical services, or deprived the general population of tests, or been responsible for a more widespread outbreak of the virus. Its protocols, for the most part, have worked.But it is hardly outlandish to suggest that the Premier League — and most of its peers around Europe — might have looked at what happened in the spring and wondered if perhaps they needed to have a plan in place should the worst-case scenario unfold.Fans at Brighton. European stadiums that opened recently may soon close again.Credit…Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat need not have meant an immediate end to any season; other, more creative solutions were available. Something along the lines of the bubble tournament staged by the N.B.A., for example, or a shortened season — along the lines of what is already standard in Scotland and Belgium — might have served as an adequate break-glass course of action. Only if those workarounds were not possible would a nonsporting conclusion come into force.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      BNP Paribas Open Tennis Tournament Is Postponed due to Coronavirus

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAnother Top U.S. Tennis Tournament Is Postponed Because of the CoronavirusThe BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., hopes to move to later in the year.The BNP Paribas Open, which in March became one of the first U.S. sporting events canceled because of the coronavirus, has been postponed for 2021.Credit…Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressDec. 29, 2020Updated 5:30 p.m. ETOne of the most important American tennis tournaments will not take place in the United States this spring because the country has not been able to bring the coronavirus under control, tennis officials announced Wednesday.The BNP Paribas Open, scheduled for Indian Wells, Calif., in March, has been postponed, most likely until late 2021. The professional tennis tours did not announce a substitute date but hope to do so in the coming weeks and months.“Alternative dates are being assessed for the tournament to potentially take place later in the year,” the ATP Tour said in a statement.Future events remain on the schedule for now and BNP Paribas Open organizers said they were working with the men’s and women’s tours to find an alternative date later in 2021.Indian Wells is not among the sport’s four Grand Slam tournaments, but it is in the next tier of importance for both the men’s and women’s tours. Officials have been scrambling for weeks to try to find a way to salvage the event as rates of coronavirus infection increase in the United States, especially in California.The tournament, known informally as the “Fifth Slam,” represents a rare chance to promote the sport with nearly all of the top players in the world in the United States. Now, those players will most likely appear in the United States at the Miami Open in late March, assuming that tournament remains on the schedule, and then return after Wimbledon in midsummer for the hardcourt season that culminates with the United States Open in late August.The announcement of the change was the latest disruption in a sport that shut down for five months this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, starting with the Indian Wells tournament.The 2020 Australian Open was held as usual in January, but the three other Grand Slam events were disrupted. Wimbledon was canceled for the first time since World War II. The United States Open started in New York in late August, as scheduled, but without spectators, and with most players cloistered in a pair of Long Island hotels when they were not competing. The start of the French Open was moved to late September from late May. It took place in front of just a smattering of spectators in cool, blustery conditions.Now the schedule for the first quarter of 2021 has essentially been redrawn. The Australian Open moved from the last two weeks in January to the middle two weeks in February. Several tuneup tournaments have been shifted or canceled.Instead of at Indian Wells, tournaments will take place in Qatar, Chile, France and Mexico.Tennis officials are hoping that after Miami, the sport can embark on its usual clay-court schedule in the spring, with events in Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome and then the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris, which is scheduled to begin in late May.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Our Altered View of Sports After 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersCredit…By The New York TimesOur Altered ViewThe coronavirus changed sports. But it also changed us. Will our connection as fans always be divided into a before, and an after?Credit…By The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyIt was all taken for granted, wasn’t it?Before 2020, sports were the one thing we could rely on. There could be wars or disasters or depressions, storms and loss and grief, but there was always an escape hatch. There would be games.There would be games on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons and pretty much some sort of diversion at all other times of the week. It was just that easy.Things were so certain that they printed team schedules on little cards for your wallet and on posters for the barroom walls, and they were gospel. Fans could look at the schedules months in advance and think, yep, I know where I’ll be that day. I know what I’ll be doing that night.That was part of the allure, right? The certainty of it all? We think we watch sports because we don’t know what will happen. We mostly watch because we do.We knew that the teams would show up. We knew the best athletes would be there, all at the appointed time.There would be order. It could be 82 games or 162 games or 16 games, and it would somehow lead to a champion decided through a system only decipherable to the faithful. There would be 60 minutes or 90 minutes or three periods or four quarters or nine innings, because there are lives to plan around these games and life isn’t a test-cricket match.There would be rules and uniforms and officials to keep things fair.There would be things to complain about, because that is part of the ritual, too, and just enough hope to maintain devotion. It is the hope that binds the ritual.Cruel, these diversions, taken away just when we needed them most.But that is the lesson of 2020, isn’t it? The reminder that losing a game is not the worst kind of loss. Not even close.But where do sports fit in now? Is it the same place as before?Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesStrange how innocent, even reckless, things can look in hindsight. There was a Super Bowl in February, and J. Lo and Shakira had a halftime dance-off.The Chiefs came back to beat the 49ers. The stadium was packed. Millions watched on television.Any mention of a “mask” referred to helmet design. “Social distancing” was not a phrase that made any sense.By March, the N.B.A. and N.H.L. were in midseason form. College basketball was headed toward madness. Baseball was at spring training. The Summer Olympics loomed.Spring is the season of expectation, and expectation was in full bloom.Do you remember where you were or who told you? There were signs, smashed into about a week that feels like it’s still going on.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesA tennis tournament at Indian Wells was canceled.An N.B.A. game was postponed, then another, then all of them. Basketball tournaments were halted between games.Baseball players were sent home. The Olympics said they’d try again next year.Just wait it out, like a storm. Give it a few days, a couple weeks. This will pass. Everything will soon be back to normal.It isn’t.It won’t be.Must the show go on?There were games to be played, money to be made. (People were dying.)Neville E. Guard/USA Today Sports, via ReutersPlans were concocted, undone and concocted again. (People were dying.)Maybe a short season here, a bubble there. (People were dying.) Everyone wear a mask and let’s get the players tested every day. (People were dying.)Sell cardboard cutouts of fans and pipe in some crowd noise. (People were dying.) Spare no expense and get it on television. (People were dying.)There will be playoffs and champions and winners and losers. (People were dying.)And when this season ends we will start the next season anew. (People are dying.)Where do sports fit in?If only the world were so simple. Fight a pandemic. Play the games, or not.But bubbles are not airtight from reality. There is violence on the streets. There are people bleeding, suffering, marching, dying.Yes, they matter.Pool photo by Phil NobleNow is the time. To kneel. To stand up. To speak. To hear. To vote.Wearing a mask does not mean hiding. Wearing a mask can be revealing.It can save lives.Or maybe change them.What does it mean to be a fan now?It is a simple question in a complex year.Maybe it means finding room for small pleasures. Maybe it means clinging to a sense of community. Maybe it means rituals that will not be broken. Not now.Do sports matter as much if the seats are empty?Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesCan the emotion and the meaning be pixelated and streamed into a million little devices and still bring people together?Cardboard cutouts and Zoom screens are two-dimensional stand-ins for the irreplaceable. What do we do now? Will we jam together in sweaty gyms and raucous arenas and huge stadiums again?Will there be crowded beer lines, hot dog vendors in the aisles, standing room only sections, side-by-side urinals?Will there be deafening roars and derisive chants and people insisting on doing the wave? Cap tips and curtain calls? Will there be those singular, unscripted moments when a building full of strangers, loosely knotted by rooting interest and colorful garb and jammed together between the cup holders, elbows to elbows, knees to backs, rise as one?Maybe. Maybe not like before. Maybe not again.There was a November game between two college football powers that encapsulated 2020 better than any other sports event. All season, including that weekend, games had been wiped out by coronavirus outbreaks and single positive tests. But not this one.Matt Cashore/USA Today Sports, via ReutersClemson played at Notre Dame. The Heisman Trophy favorite had tested positive for the coronavirus but still made the trip and stood on the sideline in a mask.About 11,000 fans were in the stands, because that somehow was deemed the right balance between safety and structure. The game went to double overtime. The home team won. And when it did, the fans rushed the field.It was familiar. It was galling.It was 2020.There’s always next year. That is what they say in sports when a team has run out of chances. It is part of the ritual, too, the grasp for hope that better days are ahead.There’s always next year. We probably said that last year, too, back when we took all this — the games, sure, but life itself — for granted.There’s always next year.Except this time, we know: Nothing is certain.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Opting Out of the N.F.L. Brings No Regret for This Jets Lineman

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOpting Out of the N.F.L. Brings No Regret for This Jets LinemanLeo Koloamatangi says he misses his team, even in a dreadful season, and that he has wondered what he might have accomplished this year. But he finds comfort in knowing his family is at a lower risk.Leo Koloamatangi at his dining room table in Fontana, Calif., this summer.Credit…Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesDec. 27, 2020, 1:00 a.m. ETThe New York Times Sports department is revisiting the subjects of some compelling articles from the last year or so. Here is our August report on N.F.L. players who opted out of the league during the coronavirus pandemic.Like so many people during these turbulent times, Leo Koloamatangi finds comfort in his routines. And so every Sunday and Monday — and in this upended N.F.L. season, most Thursdays, plus the odd Tuesday and Wednesday — he has watched other people do what he loves most.From his Southern California home, Koloamatangi, 26, cheers for his friends around the league, and for his team, the Jets, longing to be on the sideline with the men he calls his brothers. He had a choice. He could have joined them, practiced with them, prepared with them, muddled through 13 losses with them before they got their first win.But not this season.Not during a pandemic that had already killed two close relatives when he made his decision, and not when he had a young daughter, Aurora, and when his wife, Athena, was in the early stages of pregnancy. Along with 67 other players, Koloamatangi, an offensive lineman, opted out before the N.F.L. season, sacrificing career development and potential glory for his family’s well-being.When Koloamatangi spoke with The Times in August, he called that decision the hardest of his life. In early December, he called this year his hardest as a football player. He also said he had no regrets.“I have this overwhelming sense of accountability, to my family and myself personally,” Koloamatangi said. “I’m very grateful that I can play in the N.F.L. and compete at the highest level, and there’s nothing more that I’d want to do than satisfy my job. But because of what I must protect and who I have to look over and look after, my position was to sit out and watch the season play out.”Amid growing restrictions in California, he has hunkered down. Koloamatangi wishes he could have had a large Polynesian party for Aurora’s first birthday last month, and he wonders what might have happened if he had not opted out.Over three seasons, he had pinballed between the active rosters of the Detroit Lions and the Jets, never appearing in a regular-season game. He might have gotten his chance this season, as practice squads expanded to 16 players from 12 to account for Covid-related roster shortfalls.That is how Kendall Hinton, a practice-squad wide receiver for the Denver Broncos, got his first official N.F.L. snaps, stepping in to play quarterback in a game against the Saints after all four of the regular QBs were exposed to the coronavirus.“There are lot of guys out there who have opportunities in front of them because of Covid,” Koloamatangi said. “Times like this, it’s great for players like that. And quite honestly, players like me.”Koloamatangi in August feeding his daughter, Aurora, who was then 9 months old. Credit…Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesAs transmission rates surge across the country, the number of positive cases in the N.F.L. has also swelled, but the season has continued, often in uncomfortable ways. Outbreaks rampaged through the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens, sickening not only players and staff members but also family members. And although most players who were infected have returned, at least two have endured serious complications — Buffalo tight end Tommy Sweeney, who has the heart condition myocarditis, and Jacksonville running back Ryquell Armstead, who was reportedly hospitalized twice.League officials have maintained that no evidence exists of players transmitting the virus on the field. But when Koloamatangi opted out, he fully expected to contract the virus, in part because his position requires nearly constant close contact in games and at practices.“If somebody told me, ‘Covid’s going to have a huge impact on our schedule and our practicing and how we meet, but you and your family wouldn’t contract the virus,’ I think I would have went,” Koloamatangi said. “But because no one really had an answer, we didn’t know what to anticipate. There was no way for me to guarantee personal protection over my family.”As per an agreement between the league and its players’ union, Koloamatangi received a $150,000 advance on next year’s salary — not a small sum of money, but a fraction of the $750,000 he would have made.His family does not have an extravagant lifestyle — “we really only splurge on our kids,” he said — and has been able to manage the financial burden well enough. He and Athena give each other time to themselves every day, and Koloamatangi often spends his in their garage. There, he recently installed a deluxe gym, replete with weight machines, a full power rack and a force plate, and he is confident that, after the longest off-season of his career, he will return a superior athlete. That soothes him.He is not naïve enough to think that his presence on the Jets would have prevented them from hurtling toward one of the worst seasons in franchise history. But, he said, he feels as responsible for their swoon as anyone on the roster.So every week, when Koloamatangi watches the Jets play, he thinks about them and their families. He thinks about the pain they must be experiencing this season, and he thinks about how next season he hopes to see them again. Afterward, he sits with Athena and tells her how grateful he is for all their time together.“I’m just looking at her like, ‘I wish I could be there, I need to be there,’” Koloamatangi said. “It’s something that I’m definitely excited to rekindle once I get back. But it’s hard, you know?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      N.B.A. Postpones Houston Rockets Game Because of Coronavirus

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.B.A. Postpones Rockets Game, an Early Test of the League’s Virus RulesMultiple positive or inconclusive coronavirus tests, and a health protocol breach, left the Houston Rockets with too few players to compete in their season opener Wednesday.The N.B.A. said James Harden of the Houston Rockets was “unavailable” for Wednesday’s game after violating health and safety protocols.Credit…Pool photo by Carmen MandatoDec. 23, 2020Updated 8:04 p.m. ETIn an immediate blow to the N.B.A.’s attempt to stage a season without the protection of a restricted-access bubble, league officials were forced to postpone the Houston Rockets’ season opener on Wednesday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder when the Rockets were unable to field the required minimum of eight players in uniform.On just the second night of the 2020-21 season, an announcement that the game would be postponed “in accordance with the league’s health and safety protocols” came less than three hours before the game’s scheduled tipoff in Houston. Three Rockets players, according to the league, had coronavirus tests that were either positive or inconclusive, leading to the placement of four other Rockets players in quarantine after contact tracing.In addition, one other Rocket (Chris Clemons) is injured and the All-Star James Harden was prevented from playing because of what the league termed “a violation” of its health and safety guidelines. The league later fined Harden $50,000 for attending “a private indoor party” on Monday; video began to circulate this week showing him at an indoor venue without a mask.The Rockets were one of six teams in the 30-team N.B.A. scheduled to allow reduced-capacity crowds into their buildings at the start of the season, which comes as the coronavirus wreaks its worst havoc yet across the United States. Commissioner Adam Silver said in a series of interviews on Monday that the N.B.A. was anticipating “bumps in the road along the way,” but being forced to order a postponement so soon illuminated the various complications it faces.Unlike the N.F.L. and college football, which have been besieged by their own coronavirus setbacks, the N.B.A. is trying to operate a contact sport played entirely indoors — outside of a bubble — with mere 17-player rosters and frequent travel amid an unyielding pandemic.The Coronavirus Outbreak More