The NBA postponed Tuesday night’s Bulls-Celtics game at the United Center after the league saw a spike in the number of players going into the league’s health and safety coronavirus protocol.
The announcement was made Monday afternoon, with Monday’s Dallas-New Orleans game also postponed.
It was the first Bulls game postponed this season, and the first since last March when the NBA shut the entire league down. With good reason, as Boston had nine players unavailable with seven of them in the protocol.
Not that the Bulls should have been complaining with the news.
Both Chandler Hutchison and Tomas Satoransky tested positive almost two weeks ago, while Lauri Markkanen and Ryan Arcidiacono have been in the protocol because of contact tracing, just getting in league-approved individual workouts.
The hope was to get Markkanen and Arcidiacono back with the team at some point this week, but the schedule was going to make it difficult. Not so much now.
With no game on Tuesday, that means the Bulls won’t play until they travel to Oklahoma City on Friday. Plenty of time to get those two re-acclimated and make sure the conditioning is where it needs to be.
As far as the bigger picture in what the league is looking at, a meeting between the NBA and NBPA was scheduled on Monday, as the two sides figure out the best steps moving forward.
The Bulls and Celtics game has no official make-up date.
