The game between the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder scheduled for Wednesday-evening has been postponed, the league announced.
The NBA said three Rockets players have returned positive or unclear tests based on the NBA schedule. In addition, four other players are currently in quarantine under the contact tracking protocol.
Tonight’s game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets at the Toyota Center has been postponed in accordance with the competition’s Health and Safety Protocols. pic.twitter.com/Qn0hXlxCZr
– NBA (@NBA) December 23, 2020
The Rockets sent three players home on Wednesday after their teammate, rookie Kenyon Martin Jr., returned a positive coronavirus test and had to be retested for confirmation, the sources added to ESPN.
John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins and Martin were among the Rockets players who gathered in a player’s apartment on Tuesday night, away from the team’s facility to cut their hair.
Wall and Cousins tested negative for the corona virus on Wednesday morning.
Sources assure ESPN that Martin was waiting for more test results to confirm the original positive.
Rockets rookie Jae’Sean Tate is also one of the players who were sent home on Wednesday.
The NBA’s new protocol on contact tracing gives the league the ability to make decisions about possible return timelines if players continue to test negative.
The Rockets already had a player, Ben McLemore, who was away from the team with coronavirus for a few days, sources said.
The league said Rockets star James Harden was not available for Wednesday’s game “due to a violation of the Health and Safety Protocol,” according to a video circulating for the past few days.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Bobby Marks, Tim Bontemps and Tim MacMahon contributed to this story.