But while those transactions have been widely celebrated, the team got a reminder prior to the official start of their season that, even if they make all the right moves, it is still the coronavirus that is truly calling the shots.
The team announced on Sunday, which was supposed to be the first day of training camp, that they would voluntarily close their practice facility due to three members of the organization testing coming back positive for COVID-19.
“We lost two days of practice,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts during a Zoom call with media Monday afternoon. “We were scheduled to have practice (Sunday), have practice (Monday), so losing two practice days in what is already a short preparation time has an impact. So hopefully we’ll get practice in (Tuesday) and go from then.”
The players, coaches and staff, along with everyone else who works at the team’s practice facility in Tualatin, get tested daily for COVID-19, and after results from Saturday’s tests came back, presumably with at least one positive, the choice was made to cancel practices.
“The way the testing works right now -- and I think it’s going to change in a week where we might have some rapid testing -- but as of now, we test every morning,” said Stotts. “We have to finish our testing by 10 or 10:30 depending on flight schedules -- those tests are sent somewhere, either sometimes the east coast, sometimes down to California. We get the results -- our trainer Geoff Clarke gets the results -- in the early morning, two or three o’clock in the morning of the following day.”
According to Stotts, one of the 14 players currently on the roster tested positive for COVID-19, as well as two other team employees, over the course of four days of testing. That player, along with Jusuf Nurkić, who still has to log a certain number of negative tests after recently returning from Bosnian & Herzegovina, and Zach Collins (ankle) will not be available for Tuesday’s scheduled practice.
“It’s going to be a challenge, this is a critical time,” said Stotts. “The good thing is that we do have nine guys coming back from last year. We have to integrate the rookie, Derrick (Jones Jr.) and Robert (Covington) and Enes (Kanter) and fortunately Enes has spent time with us. Those guys know how to play basketball and that transition will be pretty smooth, but nonetheless, with some of the things we were hoping to do defensively, that’s going to take repetition. We lost two days of repetitions.”
Preparations for the regular season, which the Trail Blazers will open at home versus the Utah Jazz on December 23, are the primary concern, though how ready they’ll be to host the Kings in a nationally-televised preseason game on Friday is the more immediate concern.
“I don’t know if I’m going to change because I’m not sure what I was going to do in the first place,” said Stotts of Friday’s scheduled exhibition. “We’ll see where we are on Friday and go from there.”
While missing out on two days of camp usually wouldn’t be much of an issue, but considering the regular season is scheduled to start in two weeks and a number of new players are expected to take on prominent roles, missing out on any instruction time could prove detrimental. That’s especially true considering that in normal years, the players would have likely participated in unofficial workouts together for a month leading up to training camp.
While closing down the practice facility on the first day of camp certainly isn’t a good thing, it’s a minor inconvenience compared to what many have endured due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team can take every precaution possible, but in the end, there’s only so much that can be done, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has endured the last seven months in relative isolation.
“Everybody is having to adjust to new ways of doing things,” said Stotts. “It’s unfortunate that we had the positive test but we have to adapt and move on. I think everybody in the country is having to adapt and move on, adapt and be flexible and be patient.”