Atlanta Hawks center Clint Capela has cleared Covid protocols

The Atlanta Hawks have had a stroke of luck coming into their first Christmas day game in more than two decades. They had been really lucky prior to the Cleveland Cavaliers game and had no one in the health and safety protocols.

Then Trae Young entered the protocols for Covid-19 and the domino’s started to fall. Clint Capela was one of the players who also entered the NBA’s health and safety protocols pretty much straight after the Young announcement.

In his absence the Hawks showed some well deserved trust in Onyeka Okongwu who took on Joel Embiid in the game against the Philadelphia 76ers which the Hawks won. Unfortunately the second-year man then went into the health and safety protoocols as well.

The Atlanta Hawks will benefit from Clint Capela’s defense.

The Hawks opponent in the Chrismas Day game is the New York Knicks. They have started to get some of their players back which  could have made life difficult for the Hawks as they only had Gorgui Dieng as a true center healthy on their roster.

Then Woj of ESPN announced that Capela had cleared the NBA’s protocols and would be avaiable to play in the Christmas day game. This give the Hawks a fighting change as they have their starting front court as well as Bogdan Bogdanovic who has returned from injury in the last few games.

Given that Cam Reddish and Delon Wright are only listed as probable in the injury report, this is a huge shot in the arm for the Hawks. The Knicks on the other hand have had Nerlens Noel go into the health and safety protocols so the Hawks have the edge in the frontcourt.

Hopefully there will be a few more players come out of the health and safety protocols over the coming days. This will make the Hawks road trip a lot easier to manage.