❚ NBA has Disney plan,
The NBA’s plans to resume its season have taken a more concrete form.
The league has entered “exploratory conversations with the Walt Disney Company about restarting the 2019-20 NBA season in late July at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida as a single site for an NBA campus for games, practices and housing,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in a statement last weekend.
“Our priority continues to be the health and safety of all involved, and we are working with public health experts and government officials on a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure that appropriate medical protocols and protections are in place.”
The NBA, which suspended its season when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19) in March, has explored the idea of using a single site to resume games, and Las Vegas and Houston were other sites considered.
But if the NBA restarts, the Disney complex makes sense for a variety of reasons, starting with the NBA’s relationship with Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN, two of the league’s main TV partners.
The Wide World of Sports Complex, located just southwest of Orlando, has multiple facilities.
The HP Field House, which has been home to college basketball tournaments, includes an arena-style court setup and a smaller gym.
The Arena and Visa Center are also set up for games and practices, and there are multiple housing facilities in the several Disney complexes in the area.
The entire Disney complex in Central Florida straddles Orange and Osceola counties, where COVID-19 cases are stable compared with other parts of the country. In May, the number of COVID-19 positive tests in Orange County has risen from 1,400 to close to 1,800, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. In Osceola County, positive COVID-19 cases have risen from 486 to more than 600 in May.
Compare that to Clark County, Nevada, where Las Vegas is located: COVID-19 positive tests have increased to nearly 6,000 from 4,100 in May – nearly four times as many new cases as the two Florida counties combined.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver also has a strong relationship with Disney executive chairman Bob Iger, whom Silver has consulted on issues before the coronavirus pandemic. Iger also talked to NBA owners in an April conference call.
There is also an optics angle: Restarting in family-friendly Disney has a more palatable appearance than Las Vegas’ “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” attitude.
The NBA is still exploring how a restart would look from a competition standpoint. Several options are on the table, including trying to finish the regular season, a portion of the regular season, jumping right to the playoffs or a play-in style format for the postseason.