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The NBA has rescheduled all 11 games that were postponed in December for COVID-19, shifting the times or dates of 10 other games to help accommodate those changes.
Toronto had six games affected, Chicago had five and Brooklyn had four. In all, 18 of the league’s 30 teams had at least one game date changed by the postponements or future adjustments, all of which were announced on Monday. “The objective and priority here was to avoid teams playing three games in three nights and look for a middle-ground approach,” said Evan Wasch, an NBA executive vice president who helps oversee the league’s scheduling, adding, “The main reason to release these now is because we wanted to make sure that teams had at least one week’s notice on any postponements, from a travel perspective, basketball planning, business, ticket sales, all those things. It made sense to do it now.”
The NBA had just under 90 players known to be in the health and safety protocols related to the coronavirus Monday afternoon, a significant drop from the middle of last week when the list peaked at 125 players. There are also dozens of other team staffers in the protocols, including some coaches. “We think we’re sort of over the hump in terms of the meat of the postponements,” Wasch said, adding, “Hopefully, knock on wood, we won’t have any. But we certainly don’t expect another rash of them like we had, and so we thought it made sense to now put those 11 games back on the schedule.”
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