NBA getting burned by coronavirus decisions
Can I retract all that praise I heaped on the NBA for doing things the right way when it comes to the pandemic?
Can I place those words in the large bin labeled “things we didn’t learn from in 2020”?
After taking a leadership role by shutting down in March and then playing in a bubble in Orlando last summer, successfully completing the 201920 season and playoffs without any positive tests, the 202021 NBA season is quickly unraveling.
Three games have been postponed in the past two days. Teams like Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia are scrambling to simply have enough available bodies. The Heat chartered a separate plane to fly players in
contacttracing protocol after their game in Boston was called off. A total of four games have been postponed, including the HoustonOklahoma City game on the second day of the season. The team the Warriors just hosted, the Toronto Raptors, have relocated to Florida because Canada won’t let them traipse back and forth over the border to play basketball.
The league and the players’ association met via conference call Monday and a special Board of Governors meeting is set for Tuesday. Aside from tightening protocol, the NBA is faced with chasing games, compromising its competitive quality, potentially shortening the season, and possibly pausing the season, though the public stance is that the last option is off the table
“January is going to be the worst month,” Commissioner Adam Silver reportedly said on a recent conference call. “We are optimistic about improvement in February … after we get through the darkest days.”
Is anyone shocked this is going badly? That an indoor sport, with relatively small rosters, in a league that demands frequent travel, operating in the teeth of a pandemic, is struggling to run smoothly?
Although the health crisis has taken a backseat in the news cycle after Wednesday’s insurrection in the nation’s Capitol, the coronavirus isn’t worried about headlines or font size. The “darkest days” continue, uninterrupted.
As of Monday, more than 375,000 Americans have died, and the spread of the virus continues unchecked throughout virtually every part of the country.
The NBA knew this likely would be the case. Being smart in July and August doesn’t inoculate you against stupidity in December and January.
The NBA started its season in the worst part of the pandemic, as post-Thanksgiving numbers surged, deaths spiked, and hospitals and frontline health care workers were absolutely overwhelmed. What we have seen in recent weeks makes last summer seem calm.
Did the NBA care? No. Just like in other sports, the owners and decisionmakers were thinking with their bank accounts, not their scientific common sense. They wanted those Christmas games played ( incidentally, virtually all of them were duds). They wanted a month of games that they could get in before a more sensible Martin Luther King Jr. holiday start. They wanted the $ 500 million to $ 1 billion in revenue estimated that the extra month would bring.
So rather than waiting until this latest surge tapered, until the vaccine rollout was more organized, they pushed ahead.
Sure, the players are being tested every day, which is irritating to those who can’t get timely testing and could be a harbinger of the league’s attempts to get vaccinated out of turn. But all that testing, and all those protocol memos can’t stop the virus.
“I feel safe,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said Sunday. “But I’m also aware of what’s happening around the country and the world. … We have to remain vigilant with everything we are doing.”
Stephen Curry’s brother Seth was among the Philadelphia players who tested positive, leaving the team to play a game with only eight players.
“Guys are doing everything they can to stay safe … but some things are out of your control,” Stephen Curry said after the Warriors’ win Sunday. “You just have to be ready for anything. It’s a very interesting kind of predicament when you’re trying to stay in the moment and get ready for games and then you see stuff pop up across the league.”
The Warriors have had their own virus issues. Draymond Green and rookie James Wiseman weren’t available to the team early in training camp, a development that impacted their cohesion and readiness at the start of the season.
The league clearly knew it was playing with fire, with its decision to release the schedule in two halves. The current part of the schedule goes only through March 4, with the second part of the schedule due out sometime in the next few weeks.
What will the second half look like? The nation is likely to see this post-Christmas, post-New Year’s surge continue through January and the NBA clearly is not immune. How many games will be postponed? How will this snowball? Will the integrity of the league be compromised?
As one general manager told ESPN, “They tell us it’ll be better later in the season. But I just hope this doesn’t break the league in the next few weeks.”