The New Zealand Breakers are pushing for their NBL season opener next weekend to be postponed due to the Covid-19 cases within the team's wider group.
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Chief executive and owner Matt Walsh confirmed on Sunday he, his son Michael, head coach Dan Shamir and general manager Simon Edwards were among the nine cases within the Melbourne-based team's bubble.
Walsh said Shamir had been "dealing with it pretty bad for a week or so", while two unnamed starters were the only players among the group who had contracted the virus.
He was, however, confident the spread of the outbreak had been halted and would be contained at nine cases.
The Breakers opening game was scheduled to be against the South-East Melbourne Phoenix next Saturday in Melbourne.
But Walsh said if that game went ahead, it was "unlikely" Shamir would be involved and added they would "probably" be without the two starting players impacted.
"Hopefully we get a reprieve and we play our first game on December 10 and we can prepare properly.
"If not - we have been through a lot of adversity the last few years - so this is just a drop in the hat - we will get through it.
"We understand there is a lot of scheduling and the decisions the league makes for the betterment of the league, not the Breakers, [but] our stance is pretty clear."
Walsh said he would be talking further to the NBL on Monday about the possibility of postponing next weekend's game, and the Breakers reasons why they wanted that.
"We're putting forward that because we've had to relocate for two years, and we'd like to go into the season competitive, we feel the game should be postponed.
"From our perspective, preparing without Dan and couple of our key guys, some starters, is going to be very tough."
Regardless of what happened with the potential postponement, Walsh was vowing the Breakers would be even more resilient this season for what they had been through.
Despite planning for a potential Covid outbreak in the team, he said the reality of experiencing it was entirely different.
"With the people who've had it we've had the full range.
"We've got a couple of people who barely had any symptoms and then we've had people who've been hit really hard and even someone who had gone to the hospital for observation for a brief time.
"It was scary seeing my son get it and not knowing what was going to happen, then seeing just how hard it some of our staff and one of our players...
"It's not something to joke around with, until you experience it as a group you can't really prepare for it."