After a rough first two weeks of camp that included two players having to withdraw and two rather stunning losses to Nigeria and Australia, things started looking up for the USA men’s basketball team to end their time in Las Vegas when they had their best performance yet against a very good Spain squad on Sunday.
However, the good times were short-lived as on Monday, the team was back to being down a man for their flight to Tokyo after Zach LaVine was placed into health and safety protocols, as announced by USA Basketball.
Zach LaVine has been placed under USA Basketball’s health & safety protocols & will not travel with the team to Tokyo today.
We hope that Zach will be able to join the team in Tokyo later this week.
— USA Basketball (@usabasketball) July 19, 2021
The good news is that this seems to be a situation in which they believe LaVine can clear protocols in time to rejoin the squad, but he becomes the third player to have to enter protocols so far for Team USA. Bradley Beal had to withdraw from the Olympics because of his situation, while Jerami Grant was able to clear protocols and return for Sunday’s game with Spain. This means the American men will land in Tokyo with just eight players, as Devin Booker, Jrue Holiday, and Khris Middleton are all still in the NBA Finals and LaVine now enters a quarantine period in Las Vegas prior to hopefully rejoining the team.