Hawks guard Trae Young entered the NBA’s health and safety protocols Sunday, and team’s home game against Cleveland was postponed with seven Cavaliers in the league-wide system.
The Cavaliers, experiencing an outbreak of COVID-19 among their players, didn’t have enough available players to field a team and the league announced the postponement several hours before the scheduled game at State Farm Arena.
Four other games, scheduled for Sunday through Tuesday, were also postponed by the league and it hasn’t been announced when Hawks-Cavs game will be made up.
After testing positive Sunday morning, Young will have to return two negative COVID-19 tests, 24 hours apart, before he can rejoin the team. His status for the next few games, including the Christmas Day game in New York, is uncertain.
The Hawks had not had a player enter protocols or miss a game this season - amid a spike in COVID-19 cases around the NBA - before Sunday.
“That’s always a surprise, but it’s been happening a lot in the league, where guys are coming in where guys are coming in and testing and having to go into protocol, and that was a bit of a surprise for us this morning,” Hawks coach Nate McMillan said.
The Hawks’ next game is Wednesday at home vs. Orlando. As of Friday, the Magic had five players out with COVID-19, in addition to six players out with injuries, per the Orlando Sentinel, though they still managed to field a team in a loss to the Heat Friday and a win vs. the shorthanded Nets Saturday.
Young is the only Hawks player who has entered protocols so far, McMillan said at shootaround Sunday, adding the Hawks have been trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19, though it’s difficult to stamp out.
“We’ve noticed that, the league has put teams on alert to continue to wear your mask and wash your hands and keep your distance and when you’re inside the building, wear your mask, keep your mask on,” McMillan said. “We’re trying to do that, I think all teams are trying to do that, and it just seems like it’s been a spike in positive testing in the league or in sports, as it has been with the rest of the country.”
Losing Young is a huge blow for the Hawks, given how he leads the offense with his playmaking and scoring. Per McMillan, the Hawks will potentially look at Delon Wright in a starting role moving forward, and he’ll be one player who will help fill the void created by Young’s absence.
“It’s just like really any other injury, it’s next man up,” McMillan said. “Everybody has to step up their game. It doesn’t change, the guy that is out, in the sense of what we are able to do. Delon will be in that rotation and really just next man up. Everybody has to step up and be ready to go.”
The wave of positive tests has been going on for a few weeks in the NBA, with teams including Brooklyn, Charlotte, Sacramento and Chicago experiencing outbreaks, prompting the league earlier this week to reinstate stricter policies regarding facemasks.
From Dec. 26 to Jan. 8, the NBA is bringing back daily COVID-19 testing for players who have not received a booster shot, and also Tier 1 personnel. The league already brought back game day testing for players and Tier 1 personnel who did not receive a booster shot by Dec. 1, though the majority of the Hawks did receive a booster shot.
“It’s crazy,” Clint Capela said of the outbreaks across the NBA. “You’ve got to get through it. Before it was happening to, the past few days, to all the teams but us, today it’s us. So we know that we’ve got to get through it. You see a team like Brooklyn that’s going through it. We’ve got to do it, we’ve got to get through it, and keep focusing on us, building and how we get through it.”
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