Before his team's game Monday night against the Hawks, Sixers head coach Doc Rivers said Seth Curry is feeling well after testing positive for COVID-19 on Thursday.
"He’s doing great," Rivers said. "I talked to him this afternoon. He says, ‘Coach, I feel great.’ He said he had one bad day, I guess. And that’s really what we get from a lot of our guys. They’ve had this one bad day. A couple of guys, it’s lingered. But he says, ‘I’m just held up in the basement of my house, playing video games and watching basketball and football.’ So all’s good there, which is good news.”
Tobias Harris, Matisse Thybulle, Shake Milton and Vincent Poirier are also sidelined because of the NBA's health and safety protocols. On Saturday, Rivers said he believed those players fell under the protocols because they'd been with Curry at a team meal, and he was unsure how long they'd be out. He was able to provide a potential timeline on when they might return Monday.
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“I don’t know exactly," he said. "We’re thinking after the Miami game is a possibility — that would be the (second) Miami game. … But I don’t think we’ve had clearance on it yet, and so we’re just going to have to wait and see.”
The Sixers have a home mini-series scheduled against the Heat on Tuesday and Thursday, which would mean Saturday's game against the Grizzlies could be on the table for Harris, Thybulle, Milton and Poirier.
Rivers is hopeful Ben Simmons, who's out against Atlanta because of left knee swelling, will be able to return Tuesday.
Miami has also been heavily affected by the league's COVID-19 protocols. Eight Heat players have been ruled out for Tuesday's game, including Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, while three others are on the NBA's injury report for reasons unrelated to COVID-19. The Heat's scheduled game Sunday against the Celtics was postponed because Miami was unable to field eight players due to ongoing contact tracing.
NBA
Rivers thinks the eight-player minimum is too low. He only used seven in the Sixers' loss Saturday to the Nuggets, though he expected to have nine available in Atlanta, with Mike Scott (left knee contusion) and Joel Embiid (back tightness) healthy enough to play.
"That’s a tough one," Rivers said. "I thought we got caught in a really tough crunch. We had to activate Mike Scott the other night just to have eight, and Mike was not healthy. That’s a good question. ... I think to have a healthy chance of playing an NBA game, the number should be nine — because at eight, you’re taxing guys to play 40 minutes or more. And usually those are the guys who haven’t played.
"You think about the guys on our team that played all the minutes the other night, when you look at their minutes previous to that, I think one of them averaged three minutes — and then he got 40. I know that’s not healthy, and so that’s a concern, as well. The league has so many things it has to deal with. And there are two types of player health — one is COVID, the other one is bodily harm. It’s just a tough call.”