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Omari Sankofa II
| Detroit Free Press
Detroit Pistons’ Dwane Casey explains how the team stays competitive
Detroit PIstons coach Dwane Casey talks Jan. 26, 2021, about the youth of his team, the aggression of Delon Wright and Wayne Ellington’s influence.
Detroit Pistons
The Detroit Pistons’ Western road trip hit a speed bump on Monday night when their game against the Denver Nuggets was postponed by the NBA due to COVID-19 issues.
A league source confirmed someone within the Pistons’ organization tested positive for the virus. It’s the second time this season the Pistons have had a game postponed because of the NBA’s contact tracing rules, which left them without the required minimum eight players. Detroit’s Jan. 13 game against the Washington Wizards, scheduled at Little Caesars Arena, was also postponed to a later date, due to contact tracing on the Wizards’ side.
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It’s unclear how many games the Pistons will have postponed due to the positive test. They currently have three games remaining on their Western road trip — against the Utah Jazz on Tuesday, Phoenix Suns on Friday and Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday. Likewise, there is no indication of when the games against the Nuggets and Wizards will be made up. The NBA has only released its schedule through March 4. The NBA’s All-Star break begins March 5, though it has not been announced whether that game will be played. The league will release the second half of its schedule later this month or in early March and has hopes of making up most of the already postponed games. The second half of the season begins March 11.
While this is the first time the Pistons have had a positive test this season, head coach Dwane Casey has acknowledged that the pandemic, and related rules introduced by the NBA to minimize outbreaks, have created a new set of challenges for Detroit this season.
On Jan. 18, their road game against the Miami Heat was delayed five hours — from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. — due to testing challenges on the Heat’s side. In total, the NBA has had to postpone 24 games this season, with potentially more to come.
“You don’t know what the day is going to bring,” Casey said that day in Miami. “Today’s time change is one of the uncertain things that you have to deal with. You have to be nimble, you have to be flexible and you have to expect the unexpected. And that’s how this entire season is going to go, and if you go into it thinking it’s going to be a normal day, that’s when your life will be a little bit disrupted.”