Weekly NBA Game Thread: Week of Mar. 1st, 2021

Every Monday at 5:00 PM Central this all-purpose thread goes up, and the comments section is where it’s going down. This is your place to discuss all the NBA’s action happening during the week when the Bucks are off-duty.

We’ve reached the final stretch of the first half of the season, the All-Star break awaits, and the NBA has largely been able to hang on and continue playing games despite a spate of infections early on in the season. I’m not sure we can ever determine how to apportion credit for that feat between the NBA’s health & safety protocols, the general level of responsibility and seriousness with which players and staffs have taken the challenge of keeping the league going amid a pandemic, the flexibility shown by all to move games around on the schedule to make up for postponements, or simple luck. Whatever the propitious mix happens to be, the league will have to try and maintain that same level of discipline over the coming months as they move through the second half of the season and likely towards the point at which members of the league themselves will obtain vaccines.

Milwaukee wasn’t able to make it out of the first half unscathed with one game against the Wizards postponed back in January, and of course the latest infection of Jrue Holiday who only recently returned from 11 days of total isolation. That the outbreak was kept to just Jrue (and possibly Jaylen Adams who also entered Covid protocol about 10 days ago) is probably the only silver lining to that situation, but at least Holiday is back and will have time to acclimate himself to the team without needing to rush back to 100%.

The bottom line is that for the league and the US as a whole, there looks to be something like a light at the end of this particular tunnel. No, we won’t be able to go back to “normal” games with the flip of a switch, but we can hold on to the prospect of that being a future reality somewhat within reach.

We’re in the home stretch. Just hang on a little longer.

Oh, and the Knicks are the fourth seed in the East while the Heat are tied for fifth. Do with that info what you will.