16 NBA Players Have Tested Positive For COVID-19 Before League's Return

Yikes: 16 NBA Players Have Tested Positive For COVID-19 Weeks Before League’s Planned Return

Source: Daniel Shirey / Getty

Just as fans were started to gain some hope that the NBA would come back for our viewing pleasure, things are once again taking a turn for the worse.

According to reports from TMZ, the NBA says 16 of the 302 players it tested for coronavirus have come back positive. This news comes only 2 weeks before the league is supposed to kick off its return in July.

The Association made the announcement Friday, saying 16 players’ results came back positive after a round of testing on June 23. The NBA didn’t reveal publicly which players tested positive, but over the past week, ballers including Jabari Parker and Nikola Jokic had their positive diagnosis confirmed.

“Any player who tested positive will remain in self-isolation until he satisfies public health protocols for discontinuing isolation and has been cleared by a physician,” the league said.

Obviously, this is a troubling announcement for the league, which is a little over a week away from kicking off training camps in Florida on July 7. The season itself is scheduled to resume just a few weeks after that on July 30.

This is just the latest obstacle in an already difficult plan to play the rest of the 2019-2020 NBA season in a highly-monitored bubble in Orlando. Several players have already opted out of heading to Florida over coronavirus concerns, with Mavericks player Willie Cauley-Stein pulling out earlier this week.But COVID-19 isn’t the only problem for a lot of players; Several ballers, like Kyrie Irving and Dwight Howard, have brought up concerns of the league starting up again and distracting from fight for racial justice.

At this point, the NBA season actually resuming will be a miracle. Let’s see how this plays out.

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