NBA players' association executive director Michele Roberts is the latest league official to defend the level of coronavirus tests being given to basketball players, writes Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.
Eight full teams have been tested in the past week, while many members of the general public are having difficulty getting access to the tests. Roberts said the players shouldn’t be blamed for the perceived inequity.
“There’s nothing irresponsible — if you’ve got that information (that you’ve been exposed) — about trying to get the tests,” Roberts said.“The problem that more of us can’t get the tests.”
Testing on NBA players has come under fire from a number of people, most notably New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who tweeted yesterday that teams shouldn’t be receiving the tests ahead of critically ill patients. His comments came in response to the news of testing on the Nets that revealed four players are positive for the virus.
“We were doing games where tens of thousands of people were coming into our arenas. We were exposing potentially a lot of people to being infected,” Roberts said. “I get it. If you’re 65 years old — I’m 64 — and you’re symptomatic and want to get tested, it must be difficult to hear about some young’uns getting tested. I get that. And the players get that. But to the extent that there was some effort to find out just how pervasive our infection was so that people would know.”
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