The NBA schedule is already being impacted by the massive snowstorm slowly making its way across the country.
Sunday night’s Denver Nuggets-Memphis Grizzlies game as well as the Dallas Mavericks-Milwaukee Bucks tip-off have both been postponed.
Official reschedule dates have yet to be revealed. The Dallas Morning-News’ Brad Townsend reported the Mavs-Bucks game will likely be played February 19 in Milwaukee.
The Mavs’ team plane was actually stranded at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport on Sunday due to de-icing issues, according to multiple reports.
Both teams and the officiating crew had already arrived in Memphis for Sunday’s Nuggets-Grizzlies game prior to the postponement.
The NBA postponed Saturday’s Minnesota Timberwolves-Golden State Warriors game, not due to weather, but rather, in response to the killing of protestor Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Video from that incident shows the 37-year-old American citizen being disarmed and restrained by border patrol agents before being repeatedly shot in the chest. That footage contradicts claims by the Department of Homeland Security that Pretti ‘brandished’ a weapon or posed an immediate threat to officers.
An American Airlines airplane taxis across the runway at DFW Airport during a winter storm in Dallas, where the Mavericks reportedly struggled to take off due to snow on Sunday
Dallas Mavericks forward Cooper Flagg was among the players stuck on Sunday’s flight
Meanwhile, the league could be forced into more postponements due to the massive snowstorm.
The massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the US on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and paralyzing air and road traffic. Power lines were draped in ice, and hundreds of thousands of people in the Southeast were left without electricity.
The ice and snowfall were expected to continue into Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, which could cause ‘dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts’ to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said.
Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while ‘catastrophic ice accumulation’ threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
‘It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,’ weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. ‘It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we’re talking like a 2,000 mile spread.’
DFW Airport workers are seen deicing American Airlines planes during the winter storm
President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state was bracing for the longest cold stretch and highest snow totals it has seen in years. Communities near the Canadian border have already seen record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 37 degrees Celsius) and Copenhagen minus 49 F (minus 45 C), she said.
‘An Arctic siege has taken over our state,’ Hochul said. ‘It is brutal, it is bone chilling and it is dangerous.’
