The NBA schedule is already being impacted by the massive snowstorm slowly making its way across the country.
The league postponed Sunday’s Denver Nuggets-Memphis Grizzlies game in West Tennessee, while the Dallas Mavericks are struggling to get to tonight’s tip-off against the Bucks in Milwaukee.
‘The Mavericks, meanwhile, remain on their team plane still awaiting takeoff … less than six hours away from their scheduled 6 PM CT tipoff in Milwaukee tonight,’ NBA insider Marc Stein wrote on X.
The Daily Mail has sought further information from Mavs spokespeople.
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.
Meanwhile, the league could be forced into more postponements due to the massive snowstorm.
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
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.’
