You can only hope to contain him.

Dan Patrick.

That's basically the MBA and coronavirus.

Now, until there's enough vaccine distribution in this country for players to take their term being immunized, there is no stopping cove it not outside a bubble.

Not this season.

But the league absolutely has to try to contain the damage both the player health and to the league itself.

Which is why the board of Governors met this afternoon to go over new, tighter rules that the league has bargained with the players association and their strict, according to our Adrian word Janowski.

When players air at home, they can Onley leave the house for practice.

Games, exercise outside an essential activities like grocery shopping on the road, they could no longer go to even a league approved restaurant.

Players, in fact, won't be allowed to leave the hotel at all, except for team activities.

Now, up until today, players have been allowed to have one family member or quote close friend.

Why you saying it like that?

Visit them in their hotel room when they're on the road that has been outlawed now, too.

And for at least the next two weeks, the MBA is also cracking down on in game activities.

More mask wearing on the bench, no more postgame handshakes that include massless talking or hugging.

Whoa.

It also says they're telling teams that in person, team meetings can't be more than 10 minutes and everyone must wear a mask.

The stricter rules Aaron attempt to beat back what, just three weeks into the season has been a growing mushroom cloud of trouble.

Five games have had to be postponed, including Tonight.

Celtics Bulls matchup The number of players in the MBA's health and safety protocols have ballooned from just 11 last Wednesday, 2 27 by the weekend and now 34.

Some of those cases have come on the road, which presents an even bigger problem.

It's not like a player who has been told to self isolate for a week or two could just hop on the team plane.

Instead, they find themselves basically locked into a hotel room, where the organization figures out if there is a safe way to transport them home.

Right now, as I speak, there are members of the Dallas Mavericks who for five days have been trapped in Denver, a 12 plus hour drive away from home.

And if you look at this map, you can see they're not the only ones now.

Seth Curry got lucky.

He tested positive when the Sixers were in New York, so he only needed to drive like 90 miles down, 9 95.

But you have members of the Bulls organization who were told to isolate for contact tracing when they were in Washington, D.

C.

That is an 11 hour drive from Chicago that they had to take via covert safe car service back to Chicago.

Members of the Clippers organization were in Salt Lake City.

The ones who are being held out for contact tracing took separate sprinter vans to with on the 10 hour ride back to L.

A, then continued to isolate there.

Miami was stuck up in Boston when they were hit with Cove, it'd juice.

They had to fly players out on three separate planes, dividing up the healthy players from the positive player from those who had just been isolated for contact tracing.

Indeed, it's the contact tracing that has been the most disruptive to the season.

so far.

For every one player who test positive, there are usually multiple other players who have been around him in close enough contact.

The MBA feels that also needs to isolate them to prevent a much more dangerous or larger scale spread.

That's absolutely the smart thing to Dio, but it's also what's been wrecking havoc.

Take the Wizards as an example.

Just in the past few days, they have had to sit Bradley Beal down for about 48 hours after the Celtics Jason Tatum tested positive beyond Tatum, had been guarding each other for much of the game.

The teams have played the night before, then had a close mask Elice conversation.

Afterward, Bill ended up passing several covert tests and was eventually allowed to return, piling the Wizards to what was a great upset win over the sunless last night.

I mean, seriously, look at this Reverse layup guys.

Bradley bu man.

Okay, that's nice.

That's nice.

Alright.

Washington's win powered by him, powered by.

That should have been the kind of victory a team can really build on early in the season.

Except when coach Scott Brooks woke up this morning, he was told that two more of his players had end to enter the protocol, which means practice was canceled again, Brooks noted.

It has been like this for the entire past month.

The Wizards have not held a single shoot around.

They've had multiple practice is canceled and a key players suffer a significant injury.

They could at least possibly be related to all the stopping and starting of physical activity these guys have had to dio.

It has been a mess.

The new measures approved today won't be able to prevent all cases of spread players stuff to play games with or against each other on.

We can expect some players to push back on the limits to their outside of work lives, particularly some who have already had co vid and believe they're protected by antibodies.

Even though is Brian Wynne, horse and Zach well reported today?

The MBA has had some cases of reinfection among players do.

Still, the hope is that by tightening at least some measures, the league keeps things from spiraling further.

You can stop it.

You can Onley hope to contain it.

Boy, I really can't wait until the day we come once again say that and have it only applied to basketball.

But today, unfortunately, is not that day.

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