Team grapples with big questions after shutdown
Although the NBA suspended play for at least 30 days, many in the league expect the hiatus to last even longer as the country deals with the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The league has encouraged players to remain home as much as possible and avoid traveling out of market and group workouts until at least Monday. During that time, players will speak with the team’s medical staff daily, and continue to get paid.
Meanwhile, Warriors staffers have been mandated to work from home for the next two weeks and players have been told the facility is available if they want to work out individually.
“It is insane,” Warriors star Draymond Green said in a phone interview with The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson II on Thursday.
“It’s one of those things where it doesn’t hit home until it hits home. The stuff that happened with the Jazz, honestly, just put everybody on alert. You’re thinking, ‘It won’t happen to me. It won’t happen to me. It can’t happen to me.’ Then it happens to someone in your same field. Someone you’re on the court with four times a year — and you’re playing against players he played against.
“To be honest, it makes me think about everybody who possibly could be affected that don’t necessarily have health care or enough resources to get through this.”
With resources still limited, the Warriors are planning only to test players showing symptoms of the coronavirus. Last week, guard Stephen Curry was tested and diagnosed for the seasonal flu, the team said in a statement, and did not show signs of having contracted COVID-19. As of Friday morning, only two cases of coronavirus among NBA players — Jazz teammates Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell — have been confirmed.
More calls are scheduled for Monday after the league’s three-day moratorium, during which league executives will discuss when the NBA can expect to resume play — if at all — this season, and whether or not fans will be able to attend, or if the season would pick up in the playoffs.
“What makes sense here without compromising anyone’s safety,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said during a televised interview on TNT Thursday night. “I think, frankly, it’s too early to tell.”
Green told Thompson, “The only way I think they allow the season to start back up is if they come out with some stuff to say, ‘It’s not as bad as we thought’ or if they find some kind of cure. Because otherwise, if they start the season back up and then somebody else catches it, then what? You can’t just quarantine a few guys for some days and then start it all back up. That ain’t going to work.”
If the league were to resume play after 30 days, that would provide three regular-season games for the Warriors to evaluate Curry’s fit alongside Andrew Wiggins, Green and several new teammates. However, it seems increasingly unlikely the crisis is resolved by then.
After suspending play in late January, the Chinese Basketball Association is in the process of resuming play after a 10-week layoff. Without playing another game, Curry and Wiggins will have played 27 minutes together, and zero minutes alongside Green.
In what will be a pivotal offseason for a Warriors organization aiming to vault back into contention next season, the fallout of coronavirus could impact the quality of its draft pick, how much it is willing to spend on free agents and more.
Without gate revenue, the league as a whole could stand to lose as much as $500 million, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
Currently with the worst record in the league, the Warriors have a 14% chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick — and a 52.1% chance of a top-four pick — in this year’s NBA Draft. However, with scouts being discouraged from traveling and no collegiate games left to be played, they will be selecting near the top of the draft with relatively little information compared to teams selecting in past drafts.
“I think everybody is just trying to soak it all in,” Kerr said recently in talking about the coronavirus. “This whole thing has happened pretty quickly and over the last couple of weeks, just the severity of it, the enormity of it.”