The NBA’s Orlando bubble is a genuine experiment in attempting to play professional sports amid a pandemic, and that means a lot of unprecedented decisions will be made over the next few months. The first of those may be what to do with Clippers guard Lou Williams, who left the league’s bubble but made waves on social media when images of him at an Atlanta gentleman’s club leaked earlier this week.
Saturday brought word that the NBA would investigate Williams in order to determine how long he would have to quarantine to re-enter the bubble in Orlando days ahead of a return to live regular season games. And Sunday morning brought word of the punishment, so to speak: 10 days in quarantine before he can rejoin the Clippers.
Clippers’ Lou Williams will have 10-day quarantine on Orlando campus after picking up food at Magic City on excused absence — sidelining him through first two seeding games — NBA says.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) July 26, 2020
As Charania notes, the quarantine will make Williams miss at least the first two Clippers games of the resumed season. A 10-day stay alone is not the full two weeks it may take for coronavirus symptoms to develop, but it’s still significantly longer than Zion Williamson will have to quarantine after he left the bubble earlier in the month. As we learned yesterday, the Pelicans rookie will be alone in an Orlando hotel room for just four days. It’s an unfortunate blow for Williams and the Clippers, as teams will need every moment of time together to get back into basketball shape as play gets set to resume after months of inaction. But it also speaks to the seriousness with which the NBA is keeping its bubble safe. No one knows how to pull all this off exactly, but caution seems to be the best way to address any of the unknown issues bound to come up.