Expect another rash of potential scenarios today outlining how the NBA could finish this pandemically-messed-up season.
But don’t expect anything definitive.
The NBA board of governors meet today via teleconferencing to discuss options, and chances are very good we’ll all hear some we haven’t already heard before.
But with commissioner Adam Silver having already determined May 1 as the earliest date for something definitive, right now it’s all spitballing.
Silver is in a tough spot, as is every commissioner in professional sports.
All are there at the mercy of the owners who are businessmen first and foremost and therefore governed by the bottom line, to say nothing of the push they are getting from the president of the United States, but that’s another story.
Silver and Gary Bettman and Rob Manfred and even Roger Goodell (our least favourite commish) have to balance the wishes of their masters while looking out for the good of the game. In this context, it’s not even so much the good of the game as it is the good of all humanity.
The NBA, with Silver in charge, is in very good hands.
The man already has proved himself on a number of occasions since taking over from the late David Stern, the latest, his readiness to put the league on lockdown the second he got wind of a positive test.
Most of us were already convinced of his trustworthiness to do the right thing with the way he handled the removal and punishment of former Clippers owner Donald Sterling from the league after his racist views became public knowledge.
In a recent interview, Raptors president and CEO Masai Ujiri explained how Silver was way ahead of most of the rest of the world on this pandemic that was roundly thought to be a China issue before it quickly affected the whole world. It’s why he was able to act so swiftly and assertively when Rudy Gobert tested positive.
Now it’s up to Silver and his extensive NBA front office to find a way — if there is such a way — to safely and fairly finish off this NBA season.
Finishing the current NBA season is not the be all and end all. Whether a champion is crowned or not is really small potatoes in the larger scheme of the issues currently facing the world. But if the NBA can lead the way, the way they led the way in signalling the seriousness of this pandemic, to slowly bringing us back to a world that begins to look more like the one before the pandemic began, then that has to be good for everyone.
The good news is there seems to be an extensive push to finish what was started by many of those within the league.
In a thorough and even-handed piece published yesterday in the Athletic, writer Sam Amick paints a picture of an NBA that wants closure to the current season almost uniformly.
Players, management, ownership, agents — everyone it seems is in favour of working out some way to crown a champion in a 2019-20 season that was 75% of the way done when the pandemic swept across the globe.
Raptors sixth-man extraordinaire Norm Powell suggested as much on his conference call with local reporters, saying that was the feeling he got talking to players around the league.
Everyone wants this thing completed, but on the condition that only if it can be done safely.
And there’s the catch. How do you re-open a season safely with a virus as contagious and as deadly as this COVID-19 still lurking. Efforts in China to do so have hit a number of road blocks already. Initially the CBA had set a mid-April return as its target date and called back international players — most of them in the U.S. — to China in order to undergo a 14-day quarantine period.
Just under half of the 38 non-Asian players initially met the league deadline to return to China, although that number may have gone up since.
In any event, the call to return was premature. The league has since twice pushed back the hoped-for return to action date which now sits at July, ironically about the same time the NBA has been talking about attempting a return.
The delays were the result of concerns over containment of the virus. Not only were large gatherings banned country-wide but a stop was put on all non-residents returning to China, even if they had a pre-existing visas.
Any chance the NBA had to learn from China in terms of re-opening its own league is probably gone now.
But that won’t stop the NBA’s board of governors from brainstorming. They will come up with different scenarios in hopes of getting back on the court.
Whether they can come up with one that works remains to be seen, but with Silver overseeing things, feel confident that there will be no shortcuts or chances taken with our overall safety.
