TORONTO — As the Warriors loaded their gear into the team buses late Friday night in the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Boston’s TD Garden, coach Steve Kerr was still in the process of deciding who would play the following night and whether the entire team would trek across the Canadian border for the finale of their road trip against the Toronto Raptors.
Bags were loaded on to the bus and unloaded. Five players, including Steph Curry and Draymond Green were sent home, rather than risk getting stuck on the wrong side of the U.S.-Canada border for a game in which they weren’t going to suit up. A sixth player, Jordan Poole, had fallen victim to the league’s health and safety protocols and was stranded in his hotel room in Boston needing to test negative twice, 24 hours apart, in order to rejoin the team.
In a redux of the past two years, the complications caused by the COVID-19 outweighed the game on the court, played in front of a half-capacity crowd inside Scotiabank Arena under new rules put in place by the province of Ontario, the first regular-season NBA game this season played under such restrictions.
“The last few days have been really difficult, with Jordan Poole going into the protocol,” Kerr said before tipoff. “Everything was sort of up in the air, especially with the testing. We weren’t sure how many people were going to pass their tests.”
It all made for a stark reminder that the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic was upon us like the crashing surf off the California coast. (Or, more apt, maybe, in Toronto: a flurry of cases similar to the snow that was piling up Saturday outside Scotiabank Arena.)
“It feels like the whole league now is in a precarious spot,” Kerr said. “When you factor in the differences in the rules here and how that might manifest itself long term, all that stuff … We made the decision to do what we did thinking this is going to protect our team going forward.”
Even for fans listening at home, it was hard not to notice the absence of color analyst Jim Barnett, who was also stuck in a Boston hotel room after testing positive for COVID-19. His symptoms, so far, have been mild, limited to a scratchy throat. But Warriors play-by-play man Tim Roye was left doing the broadcast by himself for a second straight night.
On the court, Kevon Looney was the only member of the Warriors to assume his normal spot in the starting five. Chris Chiozza and Damion Lee took the places in the backcourt normally occupied by Curry and Poole, while Juan Toscano-Anderson and Jonathan Kuminga filled out the Green and Andrew Wiggins’ spots. With nine players, the Warriors were only one above the NBA minimum.
The limited number of people inside the arena were forced to take additional precautions. Not only was everyone required to provide proof of vaccination, workers inside the arena had to return a negative result on a rapid test and take another PCR test after that. To enter the country, every member of the Warriors traveling party had to present negative test results within 72 hours of arrival. It was even more complication to get back into the U.S., with results required within 24 hours of traveling.
After Poole was caught up in COVID protocols following Thursday’s round of testing, everyone who made it into Canada was cleared for re-entry into the U.S. with a round of testing Saturday morning at the team hotel.
But, as evidenced by Poole’s unfortunate situation, that was no guarantee. Any player who tested positive could have also been forced to remain on the Canadian side of the border for 14 days in addition to entering the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
Those hoops proved too perilous to jump through for the Warriors group of veterans, who traveled directly back to the Bay Area from Boston, rather than cross the border and risk getting stranded 3,000 miles from home, like Poole.
Poole, who entered health and safety protocols Friday prior to the Warriors game at Boston, must test negative twice via PCR, 24 hours apart, before he is able to rejoin the team; he and Barnett, the radio analyst, remained at the team hotel in Boston with an uncertain timeline to return. It’s unclear whether Poole tested positive or was exposed via a close contact to somebody who had.
When the Warriors embarked on their five-city road trip more than a week ago, concerns about the fast-spread Omicron variant were only in their infancy, but the latest surge exploded while they navigated the northeast portion of the continent, one of its primary hot spots.
The Warriors powered through two sets of back-to-back games — plus a broken-down private jet — to finish the road trip with a winning record.
“We are in the midst of a really rough schedule,” Kerr said. “It’ll be nice to get home. It’s been a long trip. It’s part of the NBA. Everybody goes through it. It just so happens this trip occurred during this surge and everybody’s antenna went back up.”
