Another NBA season, one unlike any other, dawns this week with the Mavericks facing a formidable road-heavy opening month.

The most daunting aspect might not be those away games against the Suns, Lakers, Clippers, Bucks, Nuggets and Raptors, among others.

Or confronting Devin and CP3, LeBron and AD, Kawhi and PG, Giannis and Khris, Nikola and Jamal, Kyle and Pascal.

The Mavericks’ most worrisome obstacle to having a successful season might well be an invisible one. It’s the same one that has plagued much of humankind for most of 2020, the one we can’t see, yet know all-too-distinctly by its kind-of jersey number.

COVID-19.

“Some players might get corona, get sick, not be able to be with the team for 10 days,” Mavericks star Luka Doncic noted on the first day of training camp. “I think that’s going to be a big part: Which team is not going to have positive people?”

That is why, when the Mavericks fly to Phoenix for Wednesday night’s season opener, two of the most vital passengers aboard the team plane will be NBA-assigned COVID-19 testers.

The testers are employees of BioReference Labratories Inc., the company that performed coronavirus testing and diagnostics for everyone in the NBA’s Orlando, Fla., bubble.

The intricate and expensive ($180 million) bubble undertaking proved immensely successful, with only two players testing positive for the coronavirus during three months of play and none after the first week.

Conducting any kind of sports season without a single-site bubble is more problematic, as Major League Baseball, college football and even the omnipotent NFL have learned. COVID-19 has inflicted varying degrees of havoc on each — and in college football’s case ravaged many teams’ schedules.

While the NHL reached a tentative deal with players Friday for a 56-game season, the NBA is plunging ahead with plans for a 72-game regular season.

That’s 1,080 games in 30 cities — with Toronto home games being played in Tampa, Fla. — amid a still-raging pandemic, starting with America’s most busy travel week of the year. All the while, teams are scrambling to enact 160 pages of coronavarius-related protocols.

What possibly could go wrong?

“There’s a lot of different things logistically, so that’s an adjustment,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlise said.

“Our guys’ resourcefulness has never been a bigger factor in how well a team is going to end up doing. We’ve got to have a ‘find solutions’ attitude with everything we do because this whole situation we’re in worldwide is going to put up a fight. It’s just gonna.”

Test-taking strategies

BioReference resumed coronavirus testing of players on Nov. 24, as they trickled back to their respective NBA cities following the shortened offseason.

Of more than 540 players who have been tested daily, there had been 57 positive test results as of Tuesday, but only nine since Dec. 2.

No Mavericks have been reported among the positive cases, so far. What follows is the lengths the franchise is taking to ensure players, coaches and staff members remain relatively coronavirus-free during coming months.

Let’s start with the testing regimen that began at the team’s BioSteel practice facility in Dallas’ Design District.

On any day in which there is a team activity, players, coaches and select staff members must get tested during a three-hour morning window in a trailer that has been set up in the practice facility’s parking lot.

Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ director of player health and performance, said four testers typically work in the trailer and that the rapid tests — called point of care tests — generally take 30-40 minutes to analyze. Players and staff members cannot enter the practice facility until their tests have been deemed negative.

“Players will either wait in their car or, if they live close, they’re able to return home until they’re notified that they can enter the facility,” Smith said.

It was no wonder, then, when Carlisle said recently that morning practices or meetings are logistically next-to-impossible.

Now consider how these daily tests will play out during road trips, not only for the Mavericks, but all teams. The Mavericks had what amounted to a dress rehearsal during their only preseason trip, to Milwaukee, where they played twice in three days.

In recent seasons the Mavericks’ travel party has been about 50, including TV and radio broadcast staff, Mavs.com and The Dallas Morning News. For last season’s stay in the bubble, the NBA limited teams to 37 travel members, including one public relations person and one media content producer.

For this season, the NBA has limited teams to 45 travelers, but every member must be part of daily testing and other protocols (including the two testers), which eliminates broadcast members and media.

Traditionally, when the Mavericks’ plane lands in a road city, two buses await on the tarmac — one for players and coaches and the other for support staff and media — for transportation to the team hotel.

When the Mavericks landed in Milwaukee, there were four buses. Why? Because the NBA’s COVID-19 protocol restricts teams to 12 people per bus.

Also, all plane and bus passengers must wear masks at all times, except when eating or drinking. The bus rule also is in effect for transport to and from games. That requires much coordinating.

“It’s working OK,” Smith said, when asked how the bus system played out in Milwaukee. “I’ve got to be even more mother hen than I normally am.”

Speaking of coordination, Smith said that he and eight to 10 members of the travel party who are not players or coaches have responsibilities that didn’t exist before COVID-19.

“They fall into the areas of testing, protocol compliance and contact tracing,” he said.

Those staff members pitching in include public relations, security, and the health and performance staffers.

The two testers who travel with the Mavericks also stay at the team hotel. A room is set up for testing. Smith, head trainer Dionne Calhoun, assistant trainer Heather Mau and manual therapist Casey Spangler coordinate to make sure players and coaches get tested — and receive their test results.

Unlike in Dallas, where testing and analysis is done in the on-site trailer, road trip test samples will need to be taken to the nearest BioReference-affiliated lab. That could add as much as an hour to the processing time.

Until everyone in the Mavericks party gets their results each day, there can be no group gatherings.

“Getting those point of care tests done and getting people fed in a timely manner is probably the biggest challenge,” Smith said. “It’s making sure everyone has the correct expectations and making sure we’re communicating to people.”

Changing spaces

Oh, yes, food. And the hotel itself. As the Mavericks quickly are finding out, some protocols will vary from city to city, depending on the number of COVID-19 cases and health and safety regulations that have been enacted by local and state officials.

In Milwaukee, the Mavericks were fortunate in a couple of respects. One, both games were played in the same city, so after the first game there was no late-night flight and early-morning arrival in another city.

Two, the Mavericks were the only inhabitants of the hotel. This meant that players and staff, for instance, could use the hotel’s workout room, knowing that it wasn’t being used by non-Mavericks guests and no one who wasn’t being tested daily.

Fortunately in Milwaukee, the Mavericks were able to have all of their meals prepared at their hotel. Because of local health restrictions, however, each member of the Mavericks party had to fill out a sheet with what they wanted to eat. The food then was prepped and brought to the player or staff member.

Having the hotel to themselves, though, enabled the Mavericks to have a theater room to enjoy Saturday college football games, including a bitter defeat by Dorian Finney-Smith’s Florida Gators to LSU.

“I’ve been talking a lot of trash this year,” Finney-Smith said, ruefully adding, “I thought we were going to the playoff, but that loss right there hurt.”

Guard Jalen Brunson said the entire trip “felt weird, but I was more than happy doing everything we had to do, when it comes to testing and all that stuff. It may seem inconvenient at the time, but it’s all worth it.”

As one team staff member put it, the Mavericks were somewhat spoiled in Milwaukee and “are about the find out how the other half lives.” Including when they get to Los Angeles for the Christmas Day game against the Lakers and Dec. 27 game against the Clippers.

The Mavericks will be staying in a hotel that is connected to L.A. Live, a short stroll to Staples Center, but there will be many non-Mavericks hotel guests. That means the workout room will be off-limits to Mavs staff. Same goes for indoor restaurants in and around the hotel.

As of Thursday, COVID-19 case numbers were so high in Southern California that, according to The Wall Street Journal, ICU-bed availability in the 11-county region was zero.

“Some local regulations do not allow for congregation of maybe more than 10 people,” Smith said. “So in those cases, some people are able to eat in a meal room, but many will have to pick up their meals and take them to their room. Or order meals and have them delivered outside their room.”

According to Smith, the potential good news for the Mavericks and other teams is that an increasing number of hotels in NBA cities are realizing the upside of restricting their hotel strictly to visiting teams by routing non-NBA customers to sister hotels.

In Milwaukee, for example, the Mavericks had the hotel to themselves at no extra cost. The hotel found that by not having non-NBA guests it was much easier to focus on adhering to local health regulations and NBA protocols.

Smith said the NBA has provided teams with a web portal in which to check varying regulations around the country, but the hotels in each city are proving to be great resources for learning and following those regulations.

“We look to them [for help],” Smith said. “And we don’t want to put them in a bad spot, either. We want to respect the local ordinances.”

Fewer creatures in the bleachers

If all of this sounds imposing, now consider that during the season’s first 32 days, the Mavericks will spend roughly 22 of those days outside of Dallas.

They will play in 10 different cities during that stretch, each with different degrees of COVID-19 concerns.

The New York Times reported Friday that only seven of the 30 NBA teams will allow fans to start the season, and even those will do so in reduced numbers.

Those teams, according to the Times, are Cleveland, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, Orlando, Toronto (Tampa) and Utah. Of those, the Mavericks in the first 32 days only travel to Houston, Tampa and Utah.

Perhaps playing in empty or near-empty arenas will help mitigate the ample-enough concerns of facing the opponents themselves.

And COVID-19.

Briefly: The Mavericks waived veteran forward Courtney Lee. That reduced their roster to the regular-season maximum of 15 players under standard contracts and two players on two-way contracts.

Find more Mavericks coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.