Forget the Bulls, it was the worst dose of news the entire NBA needed to hear on the eve of what will be the first full week of the coronavirus shutdown.
Late Sunday night, ESPN reported that in the wake of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending no events that include a gathering of more than 50 people for the next eight weeks, NBA teams were now allowing players to leave their home market with the league preparing for one scenario where the entire season will be lost.
Commissioner Adam Silver has been very quick in his decision making throughout this, and the recommendations of the CDC have carried weight in Silver’s process.
Yes, the fact that the NBA was the first major sports league in the United States to have a player test positive has likely played a major factor in the decisive decisions, but the NBA has always taken pride in being pioneers in forward thinking.
That’s about to be tested again.
Like the rest of the 29 teams, the Bulls are in limbo. With a shutdown on the table as one option, the ESPN report said that owners and the league office are also preparing for a mid-to-late June restart, which means a late August finish if that included the remaining 17-18 games left on the schedule for most teams, or possibly a mid-August finish if they just start the playoffs upon returning.
That would give the players that participated in the postseason a month to six weeks off before the start of the 2020-21 fall camp. Yes, a serious concern from a load management standpoint.
That means if the Association chooses that path, in a likelihood they would have to use the 2011-12 model from the lockout season to get through next year, reducing the number of games from 82 to 66.
In other words, whichever path the league office and owners decide on is a mess.
It’s a matter of choosing the one that has less clean-up.
That’s why the idea of simply resuming the season in mid-June, having the teams finish the current schedule and then start the postseason, would be such a disaster.
First, there would have to be at least a one-week training camp to get players back in shape. Secondly, for the teams that are out of any postseason possibility, why would they jeopardize any of their key players for a month-long money grab?
Finally, why would any player on a non-playoff team, especially one who is an upcoming free agent, want to jump back into a meaningless grind?
The product for that one month would be awful on most nights.
What about one week of camp and jumping right into the playoffs? Doable and interesting, but also a logistics nightmare. It still could be closed to the fans, and venues would be an issue because of the scheduling of other events years in advance.
That means trying to get television production teams into smaller venues just so the games could be seen.
No, these are the unusual times and the NBA must think about an unusual finish.
A mid-June restart with a “June Madness’’ to it.
All 30 teams are seeded by record — or point differential for teams that are tied — the two top teams in the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers earned the first-round bye. It’s single elimination for the higher-seeded team in that first round, while the lower-seeded team would have to win twice to advance.
The entire “tournament’’ could wrap up in two weeks, the teams that are eliminated could also determine draft order, penalizing those that did shut down players or tank it, and the league could salvage some financial gain.
Win-win.
Or as win-win as the NBA can achieve in such strange days.
