PBA restart a big guessing game

There was visible excitement in the national basketball backyard after news spread about an impending resumption of the PBA 45th season, which was abruptly stopped last March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It must have sounded and appeared that the PBA was just waiting for a go signal before jumping back into action.

Frankly, there’s nothing solid or clear.

The best news so far was what PBA commissioner Willie Marcial announced that players were unanimous in their desire to see the start of training.

How that promised phase would shape up or progress remains a big question mark.

-----------------------Initially, Marcial rued how the PBA continued to bleed, losing as much as P30 million a month.

In the same declaration, Marcial assured that the PBA’S aggressive attempts to come back is aimed mainly at building the national morale.

There’s no doubt the PBA is being hotly awaited.

Any news about the PBA, good or not, is readily lapped, like that suspension of coach Tad Baldwin, whose credible (but unpopular) comments against league coaches stung deeply and resulted in an uproar.

Like it or not, everything will depend on the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), which is cramming and gasping to put up a good fight against deadly COVID-19.

No need to ask around, there’s the surging threat of the mysterious fearsome pandemic.

Regarding the training phase being mulled by the PBA, there’s nothing clear how it would be put in place.

Everybody appeared ready and willing to cooperate.

But one big obstacle came with absence of a facility wherein a required bubble environment could be introduced and implemented for the safety of everybody involved.

The PBA can’t dream of a venue, like the one in Orlando Disneyland, set to be the site of the NBA restart.

So it will be home-to-venuehome again in PBA’S case. Players will be scanned and guided thru a closed circuit method, hopefully for a bubble effect.

A bold, patriotic effort indeed. But will the beleaguered IATF approve of it?