It seems not even the NBA’s best defense can lock down Covid. The Athletic’s Anthony Slater reported earlier today that Warriors guard Jordan Poole has entered the league’s health and safety protocols after testing positive for the Coronavirus. The Warriors injury report made this public knowledge this morning, and both the Celtics and Warriors have cancelled morning practice ahead of tonight’s game.

It does not appear there are any other Warriors on the list, but Poole is just one of many recent cases of positive tests that have left teams like the Chicago Bulls and Brooklyn Nets extremely short-handed, with the Nets even going back on their previous stance to allow Kyrie Irving to play on the road despite being unvaccinated.

It was initially reported that New York Knicks forward Kevin Knox was entered into the protocols after Steph Curry’s record-breaking night there, which grants the possibility that players of both teams could have been exposed and may be liable to be entered into the protocol even before next week’s slate of Christmas Day games.

The NBA currently stands at a crossroads on how best to go about this situation. The Warriors are driving league ratings back up on national TV, with Steph playing must-watch basketball (although not so much recently) almost on a nightly basis. If Covid does spread to the Warriors locker room, it could lead to a lot of cashflow loss for the league.

Oh yeah, and it’s also good for the health of the players to make a change. The point of the health and safety protocols is to keep unaffected players both healthy and safe, which clearly the protocol is not doing. Some teams have resorted to their players taking multiple tests until two in a row come back negative, with Lakers star LeBron James doing exactly that earlier this month.

We could be looking at another stall in the NBA season just like we had when the initial wave of the pandemic hit, and could even see a return to the bubble for the playoffs. There’s a lot of questions around scheduling that this would bring up, as we aren’t even to the midway point of the season. A lot can still change in that short time period, so to start the playoffs early may be a mistake.

With Poole now in health and safety, it begs the question of whether Klay Thompson may end up returning sooner. He seems to be now fully-healthy and is just working on ramping up his conditioning. If games continue as-is, the Dubs could use a scoring boost to get them going. While it’s less than likely, it’s still a possibility Thompson could see some reduced-minutes floor time against the stretch of teams the Warriors will face this weekend and next week leading up to Christmas.

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