Rockets set July 9 date to travel to Florida for NBA restart - Rockets Wire
The Houston Rockets and seven other NBA teams will travel to the neutral Disney complex near Orlando on Thursday, July 9 to prepare for the restart of the 2019-20 regular season on July 30. The timeline was first reported this week by Shams Charania of The Athletic.
The list of teams arriving on July 9 also includes the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers, who have this season’s two best records to date and are among Houston’s biggest competitors for the title.
The 22 teams involved in the restart plan are having their arrival times staggered to promote physical distancing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Upon arrival, everyone must stay isolated in their hotel rooms until they return two negative COVID-19 tests at least 24 hours apart.
That means the Rockets will begin conventional group practices on Saturday, July 11, or two days after their arrival in Florida.
The Rockets are doing their own COVID-19 testing this week in Houston, with players needing to test negative by the time of the July 9 flight in order to join the team charter. To this point, there have been no public reports of a Rockets player testing positive.
Should a positive result occur between now and July 9 that prevents a player from joining the flight, that player could still travel on his own and enter the complex at a later date (after testing negative). However, they would still be subject to the 48-hour isolation protocol upon entering — designed to ensure the sanctity of the “bubble” site. In turn, that would make them ineligible to practice with the team during that period.
Mandatory player workouts will begin on Wednesday, July 1 in Houston, but those will be on an individual basis under distancing protocols. The conventional group practices will not occur until July 11 in Florida.
After approximately 10 days of those team practices, the Rockets will then play three scrimmages in the window of July 22 through July 29 against other teams staying at their same hotel.
Finally, on July 30 — over four-and-a-half months after the 2019-20 season was suspended in March due to COVID-19 — regular-season play is expected to resume. The schedule dates and opponents for those regular-season games have yet to be released.
In all, each team invited to Florida will play eight games before the 2020 NBA playoffs begin in mid-August. The Rockets (40-24), who are currently tied for the No. 5 spot in the tightly packed Western Conference, have already clinched their playoff spot.
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