Tacko Fall and the Celtics are waiting for permission from Massachusetts officials to return to practice at the team’s training facility. Charles Krupa/Associated Press
Monday is the start date for a gradual reopening of Massachusetts, and the Boston Celtics have been spared isolation in one of the last states to reemerge from the coronavirus lockdown.
Approximately 10 NBA teams have reopened training facilities – albeit under especially cautious guidelines – but Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck does not sound like a man who believes he’s missing out.
Boston Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck said when the Celtics open their practice facility, “We’re going to make sure it’s the safest thing anybody does all day long.” Charles Krupa/Associated Press
Grousbeck has his checklist from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and plans on following every rule.
“We will open our facility for one player, one basket, one coach at a time when we’re improved,” he said of the state’s slowly improving COVID-19 rate.
“We have all of our applications and discussions underway. We don’t think it will be very long – I will say that,” said Grousbeck. “We’re going to make sure it’s the safest thing anybody does all day long. If we’re open as a state, this might be the safest spot you can possibly be.”
Player safety, of course, will dictate every step taken by the NBA in its search for a way to finish the 2019-20 season. The entire terminology appears to be changing – the so-called “bubble concept,” with Disney World and Las Vegas the two most frequently mentioned sites for a protective playoff environment, appears to have given way to a “campus” concept.
But in the short term, approximately a third of the league, based on state guidelines, is welcoming back players, including Orlando, Cleveland, Utah, Toronto, Portland, Philadelphia, Denver and Miami.
Joel Embiid, unsurprisingly, almost immediately posted a photo on Instagram of himself under a basket at the Sixers practice facility. Orlando posted a short video of center Nikola Vucevic shooting at a basket with staff member Lionel Chalmers.
This, too, is how the Celtics will start, with individual players at individual baskets, four at a time. Team coaches are now allowed to work out with individual players, albeit at individual baskets.
Players can thus begin the long process of working back into shape.
“This is the longest I’ve gone without shooting a basketball in my life,” Heat veteran Udonis Haslem said in a video posted to the Miami site. “I felt great just getting out there. But definitely the legs get tired right now. I had the Billy Madisons at the end of it. I couldn’t do nothing out there at the end.”
But, as Cavaliers forward Kevin Love told ESPN, this slow, gradual pace is all that’s available to players at the moment.
“For me, I played 25-ish years of organized basketball, and this is the longest I’ve ever gone without touching (a basketball). And it’s something I really, really enjoy doing, Love said. “So for me, it definitely was a big dopamine hit, and it just felt great to get in there and sweat outside of doing my workouts at home or getting on a treadmill. Going out there and having some sense of normalcy and getting on the court and actually shooting was pretty uplifting.”
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