NBA looking at delayed 2020-21 season
SETBACK IN GERMAN LEAGUE REOPENING MAKES DECEMBER START MORE SENSIBLE
The NBA has not given up on finding a way to finish the current season in some capacity, but more and more it’s looking like no matter what happens to 2019-20, the 2020- 21 season appears headed for a much later start.
A report this week from CNBC suggesting NBA team executives and agents were calling for the full cancellation of the current season was met with surprise by players including Lebron James, who have heard no such talk.
Commissioner Adam Silver, in his most recent availability with leaguewide media just over a week ago, emphasized the NBA would do nothing that would put their players in jeopardy but said the league was still very much trying to find a way to finish the season or at least a facsimile of it with that thought at the forefront.
The prospect of getting teams back together got significantly harder on Friday when the German Bundesliga, the first elite professional league to bring its players back together with an eye toward playing games in a controlled atmosphere without fans, suffered a major setback.
FC Cologne announced three positive COVID-19 tests according to The Associated Press’ Rob Harris. Cologne and the rest of the league has been back training for a few weeks now and those three positive tests, to individuals who were not showing any symptoms, at the very least have to scare the pants off any other league looking to follow suit and quite likely will have anyone else thinking twice and then twice more before they would try it.
One league closer to attempting something like that than the NBA would be England’s Premier League. The German setback will certainly test their resolve.
But back with the NBA, the likelihood of a December start to next season ( normally the league begins in late October) was discussed yesterday on an NBA Board of Governors meeting. Again it’s still just a discussion but more and more the idea of a December start to 2020-21 and an end in July or August of next year is making more sense to more people.
It gets the NBA away for the most part from going head to head with the NFL schedule which by Christmas is down to the final week of the regular season.
And when the NBA schedule is at its best, playoff time and the final playoff seeding, the only real competition would be midseason Major League Baseball.
Again, nothing has been decided, but this appears to be the direction things are headed.
OFF THE TABLE FOR NOW
Officially postponed Friday were both the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Combine, with both scheduled for later this month in Chicago.
The announcement was more formality than actual breaking news as the league could not go ahead with a draft combine until the season is officially mothballed and that hasn’t happened yet.
Even the late June draft is fully expected to be pushed back as well, although that has not officially happened yet.
EVERSLEY OFFICIAL IN CHICAGO
From the you- can’t- keep- anything-secret file comes yesterday’s conference call with new Chicago Bulls GM Marc Eversley.
Eversley, who cut his NBA teeth with the Toronto Raptors as first the director of player personnel and then as assistant GM under Bryan Colangelo, had only glowing praise for both his former boss and Masai Ujiri, who succeeded Colangelo in the GM role.
“Here’s a kid who was 3,000 miles away from home and got an opportunity to come home and work for his hometown club,” Eversley said of making the move from Nike headquarters in Portland back to Toronto.
“Bryan gave me that opportunity and I am forever indebted to him for that.”
As for Ujiri, Eversley described the current president of basketball operations for the Raptors as “like a brother to me, he’s clearly one of the sharpest executives in all of sports right now.”
NERVOUS TIMES IN CHICAGO
Eversley is just a small part of the turnover in Chicago where new executive vice president of operations Arturas Karnisovas has overhauled most of the front office.
Also hired were J. J. Polk from the New Orleans Pelicans to serve as an assistant general manager. Also brought in was in former Phoenix Suns assistant GM Pat Connelly to assist in Chicago.
Head coach Jim Boylen and his staff await word from the new hierarchy on their status, but really everyone from players to staff members are going to have to prove themselves to the new management group when the team is finally able to convene again.
“We owe it to everybody on staff to get to Chicago and meet them face- to- face,” Eversley said. “I think we owe it to our players to hopefully get to evaluate them in practice settings, in playing settings, and we owe it to our staff to see them in those types of settings as well. I just think it’s far too early to make any of those types of decisions with respect to anybody on the staff until we get to Chicago.”
And only the pandemic knows when that will be.