Source: Matthew Stockman / Getty
As sports leagues worldwide continue to navigate season amid the coronavirus, the NBA has been hit hard yet again.
The Dallas Mavericks have revealed that they’ve shut down the Texas headquarters due to COVID concerns. The latest player who’s been exposed and tested positive is Maxi Kleber, which shouldn’t be too surprising since his teammates Josh Richardson, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Jalen Brunson have already contracted it. The four players will now undergo the NBA’s COVID protocol, consisting of quarantining and contact tracing to prevent an outbreak across the league.
Head coach Rick Carlisle urges his team to not go into a panic, despite cases popping up, and just do as the experts say.
“We’re all dealing with a vast set of circumstances, so we’ve got to remain calm, and we’ve always got to have a plan for adversity,” said Carlisle. “We’ve been expecting that this sort of thing was certainly a realistic possibility, and now we’re dealing with it.”
Now that Kleber has tested positive, it’s important to remember that he played in Saturday night’s 112-98 win against the Orlando Magic, which means he could have exposed all of the Florida team’s players to the deadly virus.
In the game, Kleber played 23 minutes against, scoring five points and grabbing three rebounds. He was moved into the starting lineup last week and had started the last three straight games.
The team’s facility has been shut down, and no one knows when it will safely reopen. Many will remember that last year the NBA was able to solidify the sports world’s first successful bubble with no positive cases but decided to forgo the same set up in Disney World when starting up the 2020-21 season.
Dallas Mavericks Shut Down Headquarters As Team’s Positive Coronavirus Cases Increase was originally published on cassiuslife.com
