NBA’S start, at height of COVID, is going to get ugly
Masks. Nasal swabs. Disposable gloves.
Oh, and hip waders. Because the NBA is about to plunge deep into the muck.
After receiving near universal praise for having masterfully pulled off a successful, bubbled end of the 2019-20 regular season and a playoff run with relatively few hiccups, the NBA now is storming ahead with a slightly edited regular season, scheduled to start in less than four weeks.
In the teeth of the pandemic. Indoors. Unbubbled. With little room for error.
Gee, what could go wrong?
Right now, as though you needed to be reminded, the coronavirus is surging, uncontrolled, around the United States. On Wednesday, more than 2,300 people in the nation died from COVID-19, the highest daily total since early May. In less than two weeks, the U.S. has recorded 2 million new cases. Hospitals and ICUS are filling up, PPE is running short. More than 260,000 Americans have died of COVID-19, and yet it’s like April all over again.
Given the fact that, despite warnings, many Americans have gotten together for Thanksgiving and will have traveled this weekend, those numbers are likely to spike even higher in the next two weeks.
Though it would have been prudent of the NBA to wait until after the holidays to attempt a season, the league is planning a Dec. 22 opening date for its 72-game schedule. That’s the choice after considering and rejecting opening on Martin Luther
King Jr. Day on Jan. 18. Why not wait?
You know the answer. After having done such a good job of prioritizing health above profit over the summer, the NBA is back to chasing dollars.
According to a report in ESPN, the NBA believes that a Dec. 22 start, which will include all-important Christmas Day games on television, is worth between $500 million and $1 billion in short- and long-term revenues.
Starting in December allows for a longer season. It also allows, in theory, for the NBA to get back on a “normal” schedule, that will serve it well for the 2021-22 season when, hopefully, there will be a vaccine available and the virus will be under control.
And it allows for a handful of NBA players to finish playoffs in June and — again, purely hypothetical — be able to play in the Tokyo Olympics, rescheduled for late July.
It all looks neat and clean on paper.
In reality? As we’ve learned the hard way, it’s going to be messy.
You can argue over how successful Major League Baseball and the NFL were and are in their unbubbled seasons. MLB’S season was something of a charade and should (but won’t) carry an asterisk with it into the history books. The NFL season also has been full of fits and starts, with the league embarrassingly inconsistent with its rules and protocol.
College football? Simply a mess. As of Wednesday, 96 scheduled games had been canceled or postponed. And college basketball got under way this week with cancellations instantly popping up everywhere.
Now the NBA is planning to give it a shot. In 29 different, unbubbled locations (the Lakers and Clippers share Staples Center) around our plague-ravaged nation.
Though their rosters, game-day operations and
staff are far smaller than what is required in other sports, NBA practices and games are conducted indoors. And their small rosters — players who work closely together and often socialize together — could be completely wiped out with one positive case.
An NBA team can’t play a doubleheader. There won’t be much room in the schedule to make up games, with teams expected to play three times as many back-to-backs to squeeze in the schedule.
The players will be free to come and go to their own homes. They will be expected to abide by protocols, but they are young men, who have become used to doing what they want. You can’t trust them all to have the maturity to stay out of bars or private clubs or
friends’ parties.
The NBA is far more dependent on ticket and concession sales revenues than the NFL, so that’s also part of the impetus. Still, in most cities, fans won’t be allowed into games any time soon. But where they are allowed in, they will be sold the most expensive seats possible, putting many near courtside and potentially in close contact with players
Warriors co-owner Joe Lacob devised a plan to allow a percentage of fans into Chase Center for games, spending team money on testing of fans. That plan was rejected by San Francisco, for the time being.
As with every business, the NBA is desperate to return to normalcy. But there is no normalcy. And
every push to regain that semblance of regular life has come with a subsequent virus surge and more strain on the system.
Children still are unable to attend school. Families are forced apart. Small businesses are failing. Lines at food banks are enormous. It all makes the push to get an indoor sport up and rolling as the pandemic surges a little hard to stomach.
After working so hard to get it right in Orlando last summer, the NBA is willing to risk that reputation. Include hip waders on your list of PPE.