Brian Windhorst Says 150 NBA Players Traveled to Miami Over All-Star Weekend

The NBA held a truncated version of their All-Star festivities on Sunday night in Atlanta. In a normal season, a ton of players would have been in Atlanta for the basketball celebration, but this year the NBA kept things small and just a few dozen players were there. So what did the rest of the league do with their time off? According to ESPN's Brian Windhorst, they descended on Miami. Via the Hoop Collective podcast (transcribed by B/R):

"And the reason the NBA knows is because the players have to have COVID tests while they're there and they had to sign up for them. So the NBA had an accurate count of how many and ... this was two days ago, maybe it's grown, I was told it was in the neighborhood of 150 players were in Miami over the weekend. The testing site, which I think, I don't know for sure, but I think was at the Heat's facility, I mean that's where their apparatus is set up. They had to give the players a schedule. Like, it was drive-thru and they had to have multiple lanes and they had to give the players a schedule, like come at this time to get your COVID test, because otherwise they couldn't handle the crush.""

Simple math says that's about ten teams' worth of players. Windhorst also said that he monitored private flights out of Atlanta after the All-Star game and multiple flights headed to Miami. It has never been so clear that Heat culture permeates throughout the league.

As long as no new positive tests come out of this, no big deal. However, it's pretty funny to think about some of the All-Stars who balked at the idea of the All-Star game because they wanted to spend time with their families, meanwhile, nearly a third of the players in the league went to Miami. Maybe they were all on family trips. Quite a coincidence.