San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Who’s in charge? The virus, that’s who
You might wonder how the Warriors will fare after nine months off. How Stephen Curry will look after his broken hand.
How the revamped roster will blend.
How hard it will be to watch Klay Thompson sit out again.
All valid things to ponder.
But after almost a year of training, I know the real question.
How will COVID19 impact the Warriors this season?
The NBA is no exception from every other facet of life. And, for the foreseeable future, the coronavirus is in charge.
It already has, of course, impacted the Warriors. Draymond Green and top draft pick James Wiseman missed the first two weeks of an abbreviated training camp after testing positive. What size 13 sneaker falls next remains to be seen.
We already know from every other non-bubble attempt to pull off a sports season that the task is difficult, at best. College basketball has barely begun yet is quickly unraveling. The NBA is certain to be no different and could be worse.
One positive test could wipe out most of a roster for an extended period of time. The games and practices are held indoors. The travel is extensive. The social distancing difficult.
The NBA, for reasons that have everything to do with money and nothing to do with the health and welfare of its employees, chose to open the season on Dec. 22, so it could get in its Christmas Day games. That, despite all warnings of a surge that have been completely prescient. That, despite considering a very reasonable mid-January start.
So, the Warriors will begin their season this week, at the very height of the pandemic, launching with a trip to four states, all of which are feeling the ravages of the coronavirus.
Like other sports, it is likely to be — at least early on — a season of starts and stops. Perhaps the only silver lining for Warriors fans if it goes off the rails is that Thompson won’t have missed much this season, either.
The release of a vaccine let us see a glimmer of light at the end of a long and very dark tunnel, but the truth is that case counts will likely continue at a high rate well into January.
The vaccine is still a ways in the future for most of us.
But I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it, too. Will the NBA somehow manage to cut the line in front of health care workers and schoolteachers and safety officers and food providers?
It’s a real concern. The past nine months have proved that point: Sports leagues and programs have been able to get extensive testing while the average person has struggled for timely, accessible tests ( and even worse, frontline workers have been denied regular tests).
Should we expect the vaccine process to be any different?
ESPN reported that the NBA is crafting a policy for how quickly to seek the vaccine. League officials are aware that highrisk and frontline workers should take priority, ESPN’s “sources” said, adding the league wouldn’t prevent individuals from “trying to obtain a vaccine if they want one.” In other words, cutting the line. Team owners are wealthy and influential individuals. The players are wealthy celebrities. The teams, in many cases, partner with and provide marketing for health care organizations.
So, yes, this could be a real issue. In a story about equity in vaccine distribution in The Chronicle, the director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics specifically mentioned sports as a concern.
“We saw with testing in particular and we continue to see that sports teams get more access because they are able to pay for it,” David Magnus said, adding that he has lost sleep trying to figure out a fair distribution process that would prevent the wealthy and powerful from jumping the queue.
Back in March, when the NBA shut down after Rudy Gobert tested positive, it was one of the first signals to America how gravely serious the coronavirus is. And, for months, the NBA was lauded for setting an example for the rest of the country, leading the way.
Now?
The NBA is like the rest of the sports world. Shoehorning games into a pandemic. And probably figuring out how to jump the line.