NBA team facilities are set to reopen for individual player workouts on Friday in areas where state and local governments have eased coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
It's the first small step on the road to resuming a 2019-20 NBA campaign that was shut down March 12 after Utah's Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, even though the league has unveiled no timetable to return and says it could change its workout plan based on updated virus news.
About a month of the regular season remains unplayed. Two months of playoff games were to have started almost three weeks ago.
"We're excited... to take that first small step toward returning to play. We miss the competition. We miss the camaraderie," Utah Jazz executive vice president of basketball operations Dennis Lindsey said in a posting on the club website.
"We're going to ramp up systematically. The biggest goal is to have the confidence of the players and the staff that they can enter our facility safely."
"We want to make sure the facility meets all the league specifications, the local and state health officials' protocols, and then we're going to be even more stringent with those standards and create our own."
- 'Get pretty excited' - ========================
"But we don't have any information about ours yet."
"I'm doing good, but I definitely want to be out there on the court."