While the NBA has released extensive guidelines for teams this season as they attempt to keep players and staff safe outside the Bubble, the league has not established a benchmark of positive cases or a “precise scenario” that would cause a game to be canceled, according to Baxter Holmes of ESPN.
This is designed to allow the league to remain nimble in its planning and account for differing types of spread, but could lead to inconsistency throughout the season.
From Holmes:
For instance, teams could have a similar number of positive COVID-19 cases but differing circumstances for the total, such as potential spread in a facility or isolated cases at home, leading to the NBA’s reluctance to create a fixed number that would lead to play being suspended on a given night.
This is reasonable flexibility to have, but again could end up causing infighting in the league if two teams with a similar number of infected players and staff receive different instructions on how to proceed. Of course, the job of the NBA is to keep things as consistent as possible, but across the sports landscape this year, we’ve seen different outbreaks and positive test counts result in differing policies.
The NBA released only the first half of its schedule intentionally to maintain openings later in the year if needed, so obviously no one is certain the season will go on without a hitch, but the league also clearly sees game cancelations, forfeitures or postponements as a last resort.