SALT LAKE CITY — Wondering when you’re going to have sports back in your life? When will the Utah Jazz play again? Me too. But as far as the NBA is concerned, it’s probably going to be quite a while.
When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver decided to suspend the season following Rudy Gobert’s positive COVID-19 test, word was passed down that the league would reevaluate after 30 days, a time frame that even in the moment seemed wildly optimistic.
On Sunday evening, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for the cancellation or postponement of any gathering of 50 people or more for at least the next eight weeks, and later that evening ESPN reported that league owners are bracing for what could be a three-month suspension of play, meaning that the NBA would resume activities sometime in June.
That doesn’t mean the NBA is planning to pick up right where it left off. All scenarios are on the table, including doing away with the remainder of the regular season, playing a shortened or heavily modified version of the playoffs, or even canceling everything altogether.
As the coronavirus crisis continues to unfold, the NBA, along with everyone else, will face challenges the likes of which it has never seen, starting with uncertainty.
There is no way of knowing when it will be safe to resume play and what that will look like, whether it be without fans, in neutral locations, at practice facilities, or if all will be back to normal — all possibilities that league owners are discussing and preparing for.
“On Sunday evening, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called for the cancellation or postponement of any gathering of 50 people or more for at least the next eight weeks, and later that evening ESPN reported that league owners are bracing for what could be a three-month suspension of play, meaning that the NBA would resume activities sometime in June.”
With so many pieces up in the air and so many unknowns, it is very possible that the NBA, which has never had a season without a champion, is in jeopardy of losing the rest of the 2019-20 season and the playoffs.
Consider the following: If play were to resume after a large hiatus, there would be a domino effect on other key basketball-related events that would need to be reorganized or reconsidered.
The normal, pre-coronavirus NBA schedule calls for the playoffs wrapping up no later than June 21, which leads into the NBA draft, currently scheduled for June 25. That’s not even taking into account the draft combine, which is supposed to be held in late May, and with NCAA play canceled, there are many wrinkles that have yet to be ironed out considering the next class of players who will be coming into the NBA.
Then comes NBA free agency, which opens the first week of July. If that period is moved, many NBA contracts will have to be reevaluated because there is language that is date specific for players, especially those who are to become free agents this summer.
Date-specific language in contracts is not just limited to NBA players, but also coaches, team staff, medical and training personnel and front office executives, all of whom are not part of a union like the players are, so contract renegotiating is not as easy.
Speaking of contracts, there are tons of incentives in NBA players’ contracts that will need to be looked at and reconsidered. Everything from a target number of games played to making an All-NBA team can impact player bonuses. What if no more games are played? What if there are no All-NBA teams this season?
According to ESPN’s report, teams have been warned to plan for resumed play that could last all the way into August. That adds a whole other layer, with the 2020 Summer Olympics set to begin in Tokyo on July 29 and running through Aug. 9.
No word yet on how, or if, the Olympics will be impacted by the growing pandemic, with the International Olympic Committee slated to have a conference call Tuesday to discuss the crisis.
For the NBA, which has a large contingency of international players, it will be a very tough sell convincing players to miss out on representing their country in lieu of a shortened and possibly fan-free NBA playoffs. This doesn’t even take into account the prequalifying tournaments that international players would be missing in late June.
Remember, this is all if the NBA is able to resume play this summer. Looking at China, which has seemingly already gone through the peak of the pandemic, the Chinese Basketball Association suspended play in late January and only last week sent a memo to teams and players telling them to prepare for games resuming in mid-April. That would mean at least a 10-week break and still nothing has been set in stone for the CBA.
Even if the NBA is able to figure out how to push everything back and come up with a way to play during the summer, convince international players to stay, and iron out all the details with recent collegiate players entering the league, the impact on the 2020-21 season will be massive.
The loss in revenue, whether it be from the remainder of the 2019-20 regular-season games, or the regular season and playoffs combined, can not be understated. That kind of financial hit will have an impact on salaries, the salary cap and everything that the league plans to do moving forward.
Beyond financial problems, the NBA will be going into uncharted waters if it enters into a playoff scenario with no ramp up from the regular season and with teams coming off long periods of time not being together. It would be equally strange to go into the next season with no winner, no MVP, no finality on the lost season.
“Beyond financial problems, the NBA will be going into uncharted waters if it enters into a playoff scenario with no ramp up from the regular season and with teams coming off long periods of time not being together.”
Even more unnerving would be an NBA postseason that lasts well into August, the month that is usually the only one of the year without any NBA action. Players would go straight from playing playoff basketball to training camp in September, then directly into the next season with virtually no break between the two. Teams would have rookie camp in there, too.
If that is the path, when would the NBA find time for the draft and free agency?
The NBA commissioner, team owners, advisers and everyone in between will be having all these discussions over the days and weeks to come.
There is likely not a good answer for any of the issues the NBA is faced with in deciding how to properly move forward, but that seems to be what we’re learning these days.
There are no slam dunks or even layups when dealing with a global crisis.