Quarantines

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Tennis

      As the Tennis Party in Australia Begins, an Uncertain Year Awaits

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAs the Tennis Party in Australia Begins, an Uncertain Year AwaitsOfficials in Australia moved mountains to make the country’s annual professional tennis swing happen. That will be far more difficult after the tour leaves this isolated, island nation.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece was in action on Wednesday during his ground stage match against Alex de Minaur of Australia in the ATP Cup in Melbourne, Australia.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersFeb. 3, 2021Updated 3:17 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — By sheer force of will, professional tennis inched toward normalcy this week, with a flurry of events in a country that has managed to nearly smother the coronavirus.The three tournaments and a men’s team competition called the ATP Cup, in which players compete for their countries, have turned Melbourne Park into a sea of matches with the gates open to spectators. Hundreds of matches were scheduled this week at the tennis complex, which is on the banks of the Yarra River, just a few hundred yards down a hill from this city’s downtown. The smaller events lead into the Australian Open, the centerpiece of the summer tennis season here, which is scheduled to begin on Monday.A stern reminder of the challenge to public health represented by the events came Wednesday when Australian Open organizers said a hotel quarantine worker had tested positive for the virus. That prompted a suspension of play on Thursday and orders for all of those associated with the tennis events at the hotel to isolate in their rooms until they return a negative test.The positive test ended a 28-day run of zero community transmission in the state of Victoria, The Age, a newspaper in Melbourne, reported. The Australian Open, the first Grand Slam tournament of the year, was not immediately affected, but the positive test made clear that the event — with all its planning and precaution — could be upended if more people are infected.Before the latest setback, the word “lucky” kept flying out of the mouths of the players — lucky that their sport happens to begin its year in an isolated, island nation that decided months ago that it would do nearly anything it could to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The federal and state governments specially allowed more than a thousand people to travel from overseas for the tournament, requiring them to serve 14 days in varying degrees of lockdown to reduce the risk of bringing Covid-19 back into the community. For the players, that was the ante to compete for more than $80 million in prize money for all the events.And yet the massive effort of holding these competitions has illuminated an unpleasant truth for a sport that normally hopscotches the globe for 11 months each year. No one knows exactly what will happen to professional tennis for the rest of 2021 when the competitions in Australia conclude at the end of the month.The problem is that two of the main ingredients for tennis to be successful are open international borders and large crowds in big cities, neither of which are in abundance at the moment.There are tournaments on the calendar everywhere from the Middle East to South America and Florida, but it’s anyone’s guess how they might take place, what officials in those countries will require of anyone who wants to enter their borders, or whether players will be able to travel freely in and out of their own countries.“Everything is continuously ever-evolving,” Johanna Konta of Britain, a member of the WTA player council, said when asked recently what the rest of the year looked like both for her and her sport. “I don’t know how it will be. I don’t know how the quarantines will be. I don’t know how things will shape up.”With this week’s tuneup events shoehorned into the schedule and moved to Melbourne from their usual locations elsewhere in Australia and New Zealand, attendance has been sparse, but a trickle of spirited fans does stream through the gates each day — especially the native Serbs screaming for Novak Djokovic. A player hits a terrific shot, and a roar echoes through the courts, just as it is supposed to. Players are going through their usual routines of practice sessions, matches and massages, plus meals and coffee dates among locals in the city’s downtown restaurants.Getting to this point took months of negotiations with government officials, tens of millions of dollars, 17 chartered jets to fly the players and other essential tennis workers to the country and the hiring of hundreds of people to manage the two-week quarantine. The payoff comes next week when the tournament will allow up to 30,000 fans a day who will be sectioned off into three zones to limit each person’s exposure to someone who might potentially test positive.Healthcare workers stood at a personal protective equipment station inside one hotel where players were staying.Credit…James Ross/EPA, via Shutterstock“In Europe, it’s going to be I think far more challenging to experience something that we are experiencing here,” said Djokovic, the world No. 1 and the leader of a nascent players’ association. “We might as well enjoy it as much as we can.”As Andrea Gaudenzi, chairman of the Association of Tennis Professionals, put it Tuesday night, “We live in the now.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      Ahead of the Australian Open, 2 Wild Weeks of Practice

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationTimelineWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Craziest Two Weeks of Tennis Practice EverThe organizers of the Australian Open promised local residents that the tournament would not set off a coronavirus outbreak. Making good on that promise is very complex.Tennis players waiting for transport to practice at the front of the Grand Hyatt Melbourne Hotel on Wednesday. Each player was allowed to train with one other in the first week of preparation for the tournament, with a coach overseeing. Groups of four will be permitted the second week.Credit…Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesJan. 24, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The intricate ballet begins at sunrise and ends after dark, a complicated series of movements requiring the utmost precision for what has long been a very simple task — getting tennis players to and from the courts so they can practice ahead of a professional tournament.There is a strict routine to enforce social distancing: a series of knocks on hotel doors every five minutes, checking and rechecking that hallways are clear and that people are where they must be, whether that is in a van, or on the court, or the gym, or a dining pod, and then a thorough cleaning of their trail. The whole process, moving every available player to and from training in waves, can last almost 16 hours.Alarms not going off or a little dawdling can cost players their precious daily chance to emerge from their rooms and prepare for the Australian Open, the first major tournament of the year, scheduled to start on Feb. 8.“The amount of planning is amazing,” Kevin Anderson, the veteran South African, said of the regimen, which began early last week, soon after a fleet of players arrived in the country on specially chartered flights. “You don’t see anybody.”This is what happens when you try to bring more than 1,200 people, including hundreds of athletes, from overseas to a country that has largely rid itself of the coronavirus, and that will go to great lengths to assure that it does not return to the community.After months of intense, police-enforced lockdowns throughout the country, Australia has averaged just 11 daily cases the past two weeks. The limited number of travelers allowed in from overseas each day has accounted for most of the positive tests. In other words, in a country of more than 25 million people, community spread is largely nonexistent. The effort to keep things that way, while holding the Open and multiple warm-up events, has been bumpy. Ten people arriving on three of the chartered flights for the events, including one player, have tested positive for the coronavirus.That prompted health officials to order all 72 players on those planes to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days.One of those 72, Paula Badosa of Spain, tested positive Wednesday, seemingly dashing any hopes that players from those flights who have repeatedly tested negative since landing might be released early from the hard lockdown. Badosa, 23, flew to Australia from Abu Dhabi, on the same flight that transported Bianca Andreescu’s coach, Sylvain Bruneau, who tested positive for the virus shortly after landing in Melbourne. All of the players had expected to be able to spend two hours practicing at a tennis center and 90 minutes in a gym every day during the two weeks leading up to the competitions. After the 72 players learned they were being locked down, organizers faced a mini-rebellion.A hotel quarantine worker in protective equipment directing a van used to transport players and support teams to Melbourne Park for their practice sessions.Credit…Asanka Ratnayake/Getty ImagesMelburnians, who were subject to a strict 111-day lockdown from June to October that closed schools and businesses and prevented them from leaving their homes for more than an hour each day, have reacted angrily. Ticket sales came to a standstill. Politicians denounced the decision to hold the competitions.“We will be in that darkest hour for a while, and then there will be a dawn,” Craig Tiley, chief executive of Tennis Australia, which organizes the Australian Open, said Friday afternoon. “That dawn will start when the events start.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      Australian Open: See How Tennis Players Train in Quarantine

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNo Courts, No Going Outside: How Tennis Players Are ImprovisingThe athletes waiting in quarantine for the Australian Open are figuring out creative ways to stay busy (and swing a tennis racket) before they can hit the court.Roberto Carballés Baena waits in his hotel in Melbourne.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 21, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Thump, thump, thump on the ceiling. Thwack, Thwack, thwack on the wall.After seven days restricted to a hotel room as part of a 14-day quarantine ahead of the Australian Open, it’s fair to wonder if paranoia has entered like a stealth intruder. Are the thumps and thwacks my version of Edgar Allan Poe’s beating heart?Thank goodness, no. The player in the room directly above is practicing footwork drills. The player directly next door is hitting balls against our shared wall.This is what final preparations for this year’s Australian Open look and sound like for more than three dozen players forced into a hard 14-day lockdown after people on their chartered flights tested positive for coronavirus after arriving in Melbourne.The other athletes lucky enough to have traveled with nobody who tested positive? They get five hours outside their rooms each day to practice, train and eat.Novak Djokovic, right, hitting on a hotel room balcony with a support staff member in North Adelaide, South Australia.Credit…Morgan Sette/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPlaying a Grand Slam tennis tournament in a country that has managed to contain the coronavirus – and wants to keep it that way – was always going to require the fearlessness of Rafael Nadal and the ingenuity of Hsieh Su-wei. If, in addition to singles and doubles, this year’s tournament were to add another category – suites – the hands-down favorites would be Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay and Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan.Sven Groeneveld, the Dutch tennis coach, riding a stationary bicycle in his hotel room.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo practice his groundstrokes, Cuevas has turned a spare bed into a vertical backboard.Once he is finished, he converts the bed to … a surfboard.Putintseva has created a doubles-alley-sized course in her room.She set up plastic cones to complete her cardio-blast agility drills.But at one point, her self-isolation was breached by a Melbourne mouse, prompting a change in rooms. (She had to change rooms again because of a second mouse.)Creativity, unlike the quarantined players, knows no boundaries. Tennys Sandgren of the United States demonstrated on his social media feed how to get double the fun out of an exercise bike, taking hold of the one in his room to whip out a set of clean-and-jerk lifts.Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic affixed rectangles made of tape across her picture window and directed forehands and backhands at the small targets.The motto of the 2021 Australian Open: Where there’s a wall, there’s a way.Ben Rothenberg contributed reporting from Washington.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Tennis

      Rash of Coronavirus Cases Poses Early Challenge for the Australian Open

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRash of Coronavirus Cases Poses Early Challenge for the Australian OpenWith several positive tests among people arriving from abroad, and a strict quarantine, the Australian Open is not going the way organizers expected it would.Australian Open officials have been criticized for tough measures after a rash of virus cases.Credit…Mike Owen/Getty ImagesJan. 18, 2021, 4:44 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — It was late December, and Craig Tiley was feeling good. After months of negotiations with government officials and the world’s top tennis players, Tiley, the head of Tennis Australia, finally had the green light to stage the Australian Open in the middle of the pandemic.Health officials and government leaders had come around to the idea of more than a thousand people arriving from overseas, including hundreds of players who would enjoy privileges during their 14-day quarantine period that Australian citizens could not. And the players had agreed to spend virtually their entire day in their hotel rooms for two weeks and to limit their on-court practice time to just two hours each day.“The players are being great,” Tiley said then of the deal for a limited quarantine period. “They realized if they didn’t want to do it, there would be no Australian Open, no lead-in events and no chance at $83 million in prize money.”A month later, Tiley, a native of South Africa and a former college coach in the United States, is at the center of mounting anger from every side after six people on three chartered flights tested positive for the coronavirus upon their arrival in Melbourne.The positive tests have rankled citizens, some of whom complained that Tennis Australia was putting residents at risk to placate millionaire tennis players. The chief health officer for the state of Victoria took action, ordering everyone on the chartered planes, including 72 players who were supposed to be able to practice and spend time in the gym at the tennis center, to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days, even though none of the players had tested positive.Then came a report that the top-ranked men’s player, Novak Djokovic, the leader of a nascent players’ association, issued a series of demands, including reducing the isolation period for players who continued to test negative and moving as many players as possible to private homes with a tennis court to facilitate training. Health officials quickly rejected them.“We’ve been knocked around because of the flights and the challenges,” Tiley said Monday afternoon during a teleconference with some of the people in quarantine. “I have not had any place I can hide.”In a matter of days, Tiley has gone from one of the most visible cheerleaders for Australian sports to its leading punching bag, while his organization’s signature tournament has transformed from a potential celebration in the rare corner of the world where the virus has been kept under control to yet another symbol of virus uncertainty.Craig Tiley, the tournament director, has defended the quarantines that are rankling the players. Credit…Michael Dodge/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the past 48 hours, government officials, including members of parliament and the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, went on television and attacked the decision to prioritize tennis over what they believed were more essential needs, such as bringing in seasonal workers, easing state border restrictions or allowing some 40,000 Australians to return from overseas. They cannot, in part, because of strict limits on daily international arrivals.The limits remain even though Australia long ago ended one of the world’s strictest virus-related lockdowns. In Melbourne, the police enforced a nearly four-month assault on the virus. During that time, schools and businesses were closed and residents were allowed outside for just one hour (and later two) each day, either to exercise or to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. They also had to remain within three miles of home unless they had a permit.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      With Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in Australia

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in AustraliaAfter some passengers on charter flights tested positive for the coronavirus, 47 players will not be allowed to practice for two weeks.Players, coaches and officials arriving at a hotel in Melbourne where they will be required to spend most of their time before the start of the Australian Open.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMatthew Futterman and Jan. 16, 2021MELBOURNE, Australia — Organizers of the Australian Open faced a rebellion from players after passengers on two charter flights bringing them to Melbourne tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting orders for everyone aboard to go into quarantine for two weeks.The flights carried 47 players — including several top competitors who had just played the first event of the women’s tour last week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — as well as some journalists, coaches and others.Passengers were asked to have negative test results for the virus within 72 hours of the flights’ departures from Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi. They were tested again after landing in Melbourne, and four people on the flights were found to have the virus as of Sunday afternoon, prompting health officials in the Australian state of Victoria to order that all passengers remain in their hotel rooms for 14 days.For the players on the flights, that means stricter restrictions than they had planned on before the Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament of 2021, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 8.Entrants in the tournament agreed to stay in their rooms for 19 hours a day and were allowed five hours daily at the tennis center to practice, train and eat.Those rules got even tighter Saturday for the 47 players on the two charter flights, who were told they could not leave their hotel rooms at all.Tennis officials appealed for more leniency for players who repeatedly test negative in their first days in Australia, but government officials declined to soften the rules. Players and tennis officials were not aware when they moved ahead with plans to stage the tournament that the government might impose such restrictions.“We are communicating with everyone on this flight, and particularly the playing group whose conditions have now changed, to ensure their needs are being catered to as much as possible, and that they are fully appraised of the situation,” said Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which is organizing the tournament.Tiley held a series of difficult videoconferencing sessions with players to explain the changes.In a livestream on Instagram on Saturday night, Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine told her fellow player Paula Badosa of Spain that she had been blindsided by the ruling and would have to compete on an uneven playing field.“It’s about the idea of staying in a room for two weeks and being able to compete,” said Kostyuk, who could not remember the last time she did not pick up a racket for two weeks. “We have to stay in quarantine, but we have to fulfill expectations.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Tennis

      Andy Murray Tests Positive for Coronavirus

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAndy Murray’s Australian Open Said to Be in Doubt After Positive TestMurray reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus just before he was to leave for Melbourne, where strict quarantine rules await all players.Andy Murray in September at the French Open, where he lost in the first round.Credit…Charles Platiau/ReutersJan. 14, 2021, 9:02 a.m. ETAndy Murray has reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, putting his participation in next month’s Australian Open in doubt.Murray had been planning to fly to Melbourne this week to begin a two-week quarantine required by the tournament, which begins Feb. 8, three weeks later than usual because of the pandemic.Under rules agreed to by the tournament and Australia’s government, players, coaches and anyone else traveling to the event must return a negative virus test before departing. More testing — and strict rules about movement, housing and playing — await upon arrival.Murray, who was reported to be not showing any symptoms of Covid-19, was said to be hopeful he might still be able to play in the tournament.A three-time Grand Slam single champion, Murray, 33, has fallen to No. 123 in the world rankings after playing only a handful of matches in 2020 because of a pelvic injury. He received a wild card to this year’s Australian Open, where he is a five-time runner-up.The tournament has put in place strict rules to try to limit the spread of the virus as hundreds of players and their entourages, as well as news media members and other support staff, arrive in the country from around the world. Bubbles will be set up for everything from housing to training, and players and others will be subject to daily virus testing.During the 14-day quarantine period after they arrive in Australia, players will be able to leave their hotel rooms to work out for no more than five hours a day at a secure facility. The Victoria government said hundreds of staff members had been hired to attend to the needs of those in the quarantine hotels, and that the police would play a role in enforcing quarantine rules.Qualifying for the Australian Open has been taking place in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.Some players have simply stayed home. The American John Isner, ranked No. 25, said he would not play in the event because the quarantine measures would keep him away from his family for too long.No. 5 Roger Federer will also miss the event, citing knee problems. Most of the other top-ranked men’s players are still planning to attend.The American Tennys Sandgren, ranked No. 50, flew to Australia despite a recent positive test. He received special clearance after health officials determined that he was not infectious, because he showed no symptoms and had previously tested positive for the virus in November. “Some people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who are noninfectious can continue to shed the virus for several months,” the tournament said.After a spike in August, Australia has largely contained the virus through strict border closings lockdowns and other measures. The country is currently averaging about 20 new cases a day.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Basket

      N.B.A. Hopes for ‘as Close to a Normal Season as Possible’

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketballN.B.A. Hopes for ‘as Close to a Normal Season as Possible’The league is embarking on a season with restrictions but no bubble: Yes to trips to Whole Foods. No to crowded elevators and the hotel gift shop.The N.B.A. is back, but it’s clear it’s not the same — and no one can be sure when it will be closer to what it was before the pandemic.Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesDec. 16, 2020, 4:38 p.m. ETThe first team to take up residence at the N.B.A. bubble in July was one of the first to be assigned a road trip last week. The Orlando Magic on Thursday afternoon boarded a team flight for the first time since March and made the short journey to Atlanta to jump-start a season like no other.Upon arrival, Orlando’s 47-passenger contingent — including two coronavirus testers — was divided up and ushered onto four separate buses to maximize social distancing. Players were reminded to avoid the hotel gift shop and crowded elevators and were instructed to stay on the hotel property, apart from visits to a nearby Whole Foods Market.“I don’t know if it’s going to be like that all season long,” Orlando’s Evan Fournier said in a phone interview. “I still don’t know what I’m really allowed to do. I guess that’s what the preseason is for.”Dress rehearsals, for a league adjusting to new realities, are indeed underway. Tuesday marked Day 5 for the N.B.A.’s rapid-fire exhibition schedule — with a countdown clock in the bottom left-hand corner of NBA TV, the league’s official channel, offering repeated reminders that next Tuesday’s opening night for the 2020-21 season is fast approaching.As Fournier noted, N.B.A. teams are trying to make road life as restrictive as possible, hoping to keep their traveling parties safe with the coronavirus still surging across the country. It’s way too soon to say the league’s measures are working, when leaguewide travel has just begun, but Fournier sounded refreshingly hopeful when we spoke, saying he feels safe given the players’ daily testing, combined with as many old bubble practices as teams are able to replicate now that they’re on the move.The French guard joked Saturday on Twitter, in his native language, that he was getting sick of himself after three days in the same Atlanta hotel room, but Fournier left little doubt in our chat that he was “super happy” to be back on the court for two games against the Hawks.“It’s so much better than just being in the bubble, in my opinion, because we actually get to travel and play in real arenas,” Fournier said.You can understand the sentiment. Everyone who plays and works in the league knows that the restricted-access village erected by the N.B.A. at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., was by far the safest way to conduct business and finish the 2019-20 season, but no one wanted to do it again because of the mental-health toll exacted by long stays behind Disney’s gates, cut off from the outside world.Orlando’s Evan Fournier, right, said playing in arenas, even without fans, is still better than playing inside the bubble.Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesSo the N.B.A. will try to do it this way, with nearly 160 pages of safety guidelines for teams to follow to try to keep the coronavirus from infiltrating practices and mostly fan-less arenas, even as the increasing (and at times farcical) ineffectiveness of college football and basketball in combating the virus suggests that major disruptions are looming. The N.F.L., without a bubble, has likewise had countless troubles.A month ago, as the draft and free agency approached, I wrote about how strange it was to see and hear so little public concern about the daunting challenges that the N.B.A. would face this winter, when medical experts were rightly predicting an alarming spike in Covid-19 cases. Not much has changed in the weeks since — James Harden’s uncertain future in Houston gets far more coverage from the basketball media than health issues — but I do get it. The virus has been a constant in our lives for nine months. Many have grown weary of worrying.It was thus so tempting, starting Friday night, to get swept up in the basketball as the preseason began. Training camps landed a little later on the calendar than usual, but this, after all, is the time of year for just that — for all teams and their fans to dream before the games start counting.John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins have looked healthier and livelier than the Houston Rockets, who are otherwise soaked in the drama of the disgruntled Harden, could have hoped. Golden State’s Stephen Curry returned from his own injury woes with a new trick shot that he flung from the empty stands at Chase Center during pregame warm-ups and that may have topped every past trick shot in a career full of them. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving had majestic moments together in their long-delayed debut as Nets teammates. Talen Horton-Tucker, who turned 20 on Nov. 25, looked as dangerous as Los Angeles Lakers insiders have whispered for months he would be when he got a chance to play real minutes. Zion Williamson, too, was back to his wrecking-ball best Monday night in the New Orleans Pelicans’ exhibition opener.Thursday’s Minnesota at Dallas preseason game is the first I will have the chance to attend in person. Members of the news media are not allowed to get anywhere near the floor or the two teams, as we used to, but I don’t think I will be able to stay home after getting Fournier’s description of the State Farm Arena scene for the Magic’s 116-112 victory over the Hawks in the teams’ Friday exhibition.“It was really fun, actually,” Fournier said. “I didn’t really pay attention to the empty seats. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just because I was so happy to be out there.”Teams like the Los Angeles Lakers spent months in the bubble this summer, which took a mental toll. Some elements of the bubble environment, like sideline masks, remain as the league goes forward in fan-less arenas.Credit…Kyusung Gong/Associated PressWhere I live, in the same city as one of the game’s loudest optimists, talk about the coming season tends to be even more bullish, in contrast to my typical fear-the-worst anxiety, which I am once again struggling to stifle. Mark Cuban, the Dallas Mavericks’ owner, is a self-professed vaccines “geek” who has been reading everything he can as a mass vaccination campaign begins to roll out nationwide. Last week on SiriusXM NBA Radio, Cuban said it was “my personal belief” that there would be a “huge snap back” in March or April “where most of the people in the country will have had access” to coronavirus vaccination “if they wanted it.”Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, has predicted that most people will be able to get the vaccine by late spring or early summer, and that those with no underlying conditions could be vaccinated by the end of March or beginning of April. Seemingly taking his cue from such projections, Cuban told SiriusXM that he thinks “things are going to get really fun” in N.B.A. arenas in the second half of the season, provided that the league’s rush to start before Christmas to satisfy its television partners proceeds into the spring with no serious setbacks.When I reached Cuban on Tuesday, he insisted that the Mavericks’ mantra is “safety first, safety second and safety third.” He also confirmed that he would be at American Airlines Center on Thursday night, which will be Cuban’s first opportunity to watch his team in person since the viral clip of his stunned in-game reaction to news of the season’s suspension on March 11.“So far, so good,” Cuban said. “The most important aspect is that the players and staff that are traveling are treating each game as a self-imposed bubble. We won’t be able to eliminate cases and outbreaks, but if we can minimize them, then hopefully it can be as close to a normal season as possible.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More