{"id":1303,"date":"2020-12-24T18:30:28","date_gmt":"2020-12-24T18:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2020-12-24T18:30:28","modified_gmt":"2020-12-24T18:30:28","slug":"covid-19-shuts-down-rockets-okc-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/24\/covid-19-shuts-down-rockets-okc-season-opener\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 shuts down Rockets-OKC season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>From James Harden breaking COVID-19 protocols to false positives, and close contacts, the Houston Rockets season is off to a tumultuous start. The team\u2019s season opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder was postponed for health and safety reasons hours before the game was scheduled to tip off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">With four players quarantined and three others producing positive or inconclusive <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/COVID19?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#COVID19<\/a> tests, the season opener between the OKC Thunder and Houston <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Rockets?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Rockets<\/a> has been postponed in accordance with the league\u2019s Health and Safety Protocols. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NBAisBack?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#NBAisBack<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ThunderUp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#ThunderUp<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/MjBzBqRwOu\">pic.twitter.com\/MjBzBqRwOu<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Double Take Sports (@dbltakesports) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dbltakesports\/status\/1341886965600411652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 23, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Prior to the announcement, news leaked throughout the day that <a href=\"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/03\/wizards-john-wall-era-comes-to-abrupt-end\/\">John Wall<\/a> and Boogie Cousins were sent home because they were identified as close contacts to another player that tested positive for COVID. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the NBA\u2019s statement, they confirmed that three Houston Rockets players returned tests that were either positive or inconclusive for coronavirus under the NBA\u2019s testing program.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following the contact tracing protocol, four other players were identified as being under quarantine.&nbsp;All other Rockets players that were tested returned negative results.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To further complicate things, Houston guard James Harden was unavailable due to a violation of the Health and Safety Protocols. Harden was later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/story\/_\/id\/30588182\/houston-rockets-nba-reviewing-james-harden-strip-club-video-sources-say\">fined $50,000<\/a> for violating league protocols, which among other things prohibit attending indoor social gatherings of 15 or more people or entering bars, lounges, clubs or similar establishments. Harden violated these rules when he attended a private indoor party on Monday, Dec. 21.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to the domino of events that led to the postponement, Houston had one additional player who was unavailable to play due to injury. As such, the Rockets didn\u2019t have the league-required eight available players to proceed with their game against the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the first COVID-19 game casualty of the NBA season. The league is surely hoping this does not become a trend after they successfully escaped issues by implementing the bubble in Orlando over the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From James Harden breaking COVID-19 protocols to false positives, and close contacts, the Houston Rockets season is off to a tumultuous start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/RocketsOKC2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbltakesports.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}