Rockets: How the NBA botched the Danuel House investigation

Although NBA commissioner Adam Silver determined that Houston Rockets forward Danuel House violated bubble protocol, his arrival to the decision was erroneous and wildly inconsistent.

By now everyone knows who Danuel House is, for one reason or another. Houston Rockets fans view House as another great find by general manager Daryl Morey, as House was released by the superteam Golden State Warriors, leaving him available for Morey to sign him. House is also known for his 3-and-D ability, as he was the Rockets’ best 3-point shooter during the 2018-19 season and was one of their best shooters this past season.

But House has become known by the national media for a different reason of late. The Houston Rockets forward was recently under investigation for a potential violation of the NBA’s bubble protocol, which came at a bad time, as the Rockets sought to take down the LeBron James-led Los Angeles Lakers, who had the best record in the Western Conference this season.

The investigation forced House to miss Games 3 and 4 of the series, before it was subsequently determined that House had a coronavirus tester in his room for approximately eight hours, ruling him out for the remainder of the 2020 postseason. But in spite of the wrongdoing, there were several things about how the NBA’s investigation was handled that seemed peculiar.

For starters, the standards for handling investigations and/or suspensions across all sports leagues is to allow the player in question to continue to play while the investigation is underway. This is because the player hasn’t been determined to have violated rules, policies, and/or procedures so the only natural thing to do is to allow the investigation to run it’s course, because suspending before reaching a determination of guilt runs the risk of levying a penalty when said player may have been innocent.

The league office hasn’t been fully transparent about the situation, which has left NBA fans to fill in the blanks on their own about what may have really transpired and why Adam Silver’s crew may have gone about the situation in the secretive manner in which they’ve operated.

Next: Discrediting the COVID theory