No retreat from Silver on NBA return

Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus. He was immediately removed from the floor. A game, then most of the NBA season, was canceled. The sports world followed that lead. The rest of the world followed that.

That may be an over-streamlined version of what began last March. But it’s close enough to solidify Adam Silver’s bona fides as a commissioner who cares about the safety of his players … and at whatever cost.

So when Silver was confronted the other day with new virus trends and half-an-expectation that he would retreat in horror from a plan to finish the NBA season in a virtual medical bubble in Orlando, he didn’t retreat on defense.

Instead, he drove his plan right to the rack.

“No options are risk-free right now,” he was quoted as saying.

Silver oversees a sport where 270-pound men run at full speed with no armor, leap toward a 10-foot-high rim and occasionally break bones on the return to Earth. So in basketball, nothing ever really was “riskfree.”

“My ultimate conclusion is that we can’t outrun the virus, and that this is what we’re going to be living with for the foreseeable future,” Silver said. “It’s why we designed the campus the way we did. It’s a closed network. And while impermeable, we are in essence protected from cases around us. At least, that’s the model.

“So for those reasons, we’re still very comfortable being in Orlando.”

Because the best commissioner in pro sports was not comfortable in March, he has the right to be believed when he says he is in June.

*** Sparkling water … I don’t get it.

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The most essential question in any baseball season, the one asked most often, the one that captivates fans more than any lineup change, will arise early this year.

So why wait for the answer?

Here it is: Buyers. Not sellers.

With the season expected to begin July 23, with the trade deadline set for Aug. 31, and with the possibility remaining that more than the standard 10 teams will make the playoffs, it is likely that 90 percent of the teams will be right to believe they can win a pennant after roughly 35 games.

If they don’t, they don’t, as the man once said. But none should be in a position to surrender just seven times through a pitching rotation.

Consider that one of the many unforeseen ripples about to wash over baseball in a short season. The question is always how far those ripples will spread.

With the market destined to swing wildly in favor of the in-season sellers, might there be a tipping point? Might a price for a dependable closer or a sizzling hitter rise to the level where even the general manager of a contender cannot resist offloading one in exchange for a possible franchise-turning truckload of prospects?

And could lost ticket revenues nudge some owners into punting high-priced players quicker than usual? That could open some opportunities for some wealthier teams to add salary at the deadline.

Whatever happens, one thing is certain: The buyers-sellers argument will commence almost at once. To baseball fans, that’s a nice treat.

• The dynamics of the usual baseball business schedule scuttled, the Phillies have some bonus time to do right by J.T. Realmuto and make him the highest-paid catcher in history.

Realmuto lost an arbitration battle to the Phillies in the offseason and was ordered to play this season for $10 million. (Pro-rated for 60 games, that means he will make less than $4 million.) That, though, was a business cost all sides understood and even welcomed as a method to set the market for the game’s best catcher.

But with the season not starting until late July, and with restrictions on baseball business being lifted as of Friday, neither the Phillies nor Realmuto can risk another impasse. The Phillies, who traded top pitching prospect Sixto Sanchez and major-league catcher Jorge Alfaro for Realmuto and his soon-to-expire contract, cannot afford to lose Realmuto in free agency. Nor can Realmuto risk a slow start in a 60-game season and even a slight suppression of his value. Worse, he cannot risk a careerthreatening injury.

So the game is back on. John Middleton has vowed to spend what it takes to win a World Series, and he proved that by making Bryce Harper $330,000,000 wealthier. It’s time for the Phillies to give Realmuto a fouryear, $100,000,000 contract before the Yankees see that bet and raise it after the season.

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How much time do you have to have on your hands to brew your own beer?

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After having made $67 million to play the game, Malcolm Jenkins last week announced that football was “non-essential” and campaigned for it to go away until the flu clears.

It was nice of him to make that decision for the concession-stand workers who need the extra income to make a better Christmas for their kids, and for the per-diem employees who sweep the stadium clear, and for the trainingroom interns who will only have so many years to learn a vital craft, and for the printing firms who might have to lay off personnel if there are no programs to publish, and for the groundskeepers, broadcasters, referees and assistant coaches, and for parking-lot attendants, advertisers, sporting-goods suppliers and the charities that depend on massive pot-rakes from in-stadium 50-50 raffles.

More than anything, it was nice of Jenkins to speak for the rookies (and their families) who have waited a lifetime, like he once did, to realize a nice living playing football and who would remain exactly $67 million short of the former Eagle’s take if there was no NFL. Non-essential? Nonsense.

*** Sniffing the wine before taking a swig … I don’t get it.