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The Suns did not pick up any new big men either at the trade deadline or on the buyout market, and now they’re potentially going to pay for it.
The Suns announced that Frank Kaminsky is out of tonight’s game, after also missing yesterday’s game, due to the NBA’s health and safety protocols. Meaning, he either tested positive for COVID or was recently in close contact with someone who tested positive.
The last Suns player out for COVID protocols was Cameron Johnson, who missed two weeks of games.
In related news — at least on the topic if not the human subject — the NBA announced today that one new player has tested positive for COVID in the past week.
The NBA announces that, of the 481 players tested for COVID-19 since March 24, one new player has returned a confirmed positive test. pic.twitter.com/vRo6B86ksM
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) March 31, 2021
One player out of 484 tested in the past week.
Frank is the only Phoenix Suns player who is in the COVID protocol, so at least there isn’t any contact tracing issues so far. Few things would be worse than a team-wide outbreak of COVID that knocks them over.
Maybe they should get vaccinated, huh?
On the vaccine front, which could head off any NBA team concerns over a COVID outbreak between now and potentially ever, Arizona’s governor recently made the COVID vaccine available to anyone age 16 or older. All Suns players and employees are over the age of 16, if you didn’t know. And I would bet my butt the NBA has an inside source to get doses for teams, just like they did for tests. Just yesterday, I saw a tweet of the Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander getting his vaccine at what looked like the team facility.
Now the question is whether all the Suns players will take it. And how soon.
Let’s not have a big discussion over the pluses and minuses of a vaccine, or taking the vaccine. Everyone has their own opinions and won’t be changed in this forum. We are not doctors or scientists in any way.
Let’s just talk about losing Frank for the foreseeable future and having to hope that Dario Saric and Deandre Ayton can handle all the big man duties for a while. They weren’t playing Frank much the last few weeks anyway, but now the safety Tank is gone.
And let’s hope the Suns don’t have any more COVID outbreaks in this magical season.