Shams Charania of The Athletic has announced that the NBA and NBPA are in talks to increase COVID-19 testing among players.
The NBA has decided to do this due to an increase of players recently testing positive in the past week for COVID-19. There will be an increase in testing among players who are vaccinated, and unvaccinated, for all game and practice days. At the moment, it is believed that there will be no testing on off-days.
The NBPA told The Athletic,
Article Continues Below“Now that we are seeing breakthroughs, we believe the need to test more often,” Roberts said. “The notion of not testing, I get that people in society are saying, ‘I didn't even know I'm sick.' I get the sentiment. I can't get my brain around (how) we're not going to test just because we don't want to know.
Fortunately, the NBA has a 97% vaccination rate and more than 60% of players have already taken a booster shot. There's clearly something going around in the NBA as many players including guys like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, James Harden, and many others, have all been put in the league's health and safety protocols within the past two weeks.
Unfortunately, there isn't really a clear answer for what the NBA could do. Testing players more often will surely help them be able to not spread the virus as much as it has been in the past few weeks. Perhaps a two-week shutdown could be the best thing for the league.