(02-09-2021, 09:55 PM)KillerLeft Wrote: Just as things were starting to look a little better, they lost more than half of their rotation players for almost a month. Frankly, there are unavoidable consequences to this - bigger consequences than simply playing games without those guys (although that sucked). They missed a month’s worth of conditioning, coaching, practice (what little there was), gelling on the floor, etc.I think the whole COVID experience has been underreported.
It’s incredible to me that anyone believed the team would instantly play well after dropping those guys back into the mix, actually. The second the Covid news hit, my first thought was “well, there goes this season.” I remember being really angry that the organization allowed such a collosal mistake to take place, and feeling surprised that others weren’t similarly upset. Maybe that was a slight overreaction, but I’d guess it’s going to take about a month to make up for all that the team missed out on while their guys were stuck in hotel rooms...for like a month. THAT is the problem. THOSE are the consequences.
On one of the pods (maybe MMB?), they were talking about an in-depth interview one of the media outlets had with WCS about it. He got into how nobody realizes how very sick the players were, and then how quickly they were returned to play, and how the games just kept coming relentlessly, so that there was never a chance for anyone to catch his breath. It was described as a thoroughly miserable experience for all concerned.
It would also be instructive to know how they caught the disease, although we may never learn that. I'm not saying it was anyone's fault, but they have kept it very quiet, and tbh, a certain laxity about the rules has been known to occur in the NBA context.
At any rate, different individuals suffer long-term effects of one sort or another, and we don't know to what extent that is going on. It seems that the Mavs and the league are eager to brush the virus off and just move on, but I agree that it was a much bigger impact event than they want to admit.