What could it look like if the NBA season restarts this summer?
Well, for one thing, if the lesson of the Korean Basketball League (KBL) can tell us anything, it will look very well-tested.
The novel coronavirus behind the global pandemic shuttering Boston Celtics and league-wide games until at least mid-May was aggressively tested for by a country who survived a scare with a similar coronavirus epidemic — Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) — in 2015.
That incident, which infected 186 and killed 36, impacted the South Korean economy enough that plans were made to develop a robust system of viral testing enabling the country to hit the ground running on the arrival of the COVID-19-inducing pandemic this winter, reports Science’s Dennis Normile.
That testing regime — still being developed in the U.S. — helped South Korea contain an outbreak enough to re-start the KBL at the end of March, reports ESPN’s Jonathan Givony.
While such a method is not infallible and, at least in the United States, will be contingent on other methods like social distancing to hold down infection rates enough that hospitals can keep up with acute cases, it suggests that the NBA’s hopes to resume the season are not just pipe dreams.
Combined with rigorous testing for fevers, self-quarantine of players, and a little bit of luck, we could indeed see at least a few more 2019-20 Boston Celtics regular-season games held.
We might even see a “deep” playoff run — however that ends up being defined with a postseason format far from being decided at this point.
Of course, all of this is contingent on the aggressive testing regime being able to continue putting out new flare-ups, but it’s excellent news nonetheless.
