South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
No knowing where NBA is going
What comes next for Heat, league remains an abstract
It’s as if we’re stuck in the midst of the 2019-20-21 season.
The Basketball Hall of Fame’s celebration of its Class of 2020 initially was scheduled for late August, then moved to mid-October, with the plan now for next spring, months before the expected induction of the Class of 2021 in Springfield, Mass.
The Boston Marathon originally was scheduled for April 20, pushed back to September, then canceled.
The Belmont Stakes will now be run before the Kentucky Derby, which is scheduled for Sept. 5, to be followed by the Oct. 3 Preakness Stakes, in a Triple Crown as out of order as these sporting times themselves.
It all, of course, is a matter of safety and common sense, a sports schedule constantly being remastered amid the new coronavirus pandemic.
Which brings us to the Heat and the NBA and the (somewhat) emerging clarity on what could come next.
In the wake of Friday’s NBA Board of Governors meeting, the targeted date for the league’s return appears to be July 31. Also, according to the results of the survey issued to general man
agers, the strongest response was to make sure play is completed by Oct. 1.
That, in turn, would barely leave two months to complete the NBA draft, free agency and summer-league-in-the-fall before opening training camps in advance of the hoped-for Christmas Day start to 2020-21.
At some point, the seasons run into each other.
You start, of course, with the loudest unsaid element of the NBA equation: Playing out 2019-20 to a championship conclusion in the absence of fans is all about the television dollars, an ESPN version of The Truman Show, if you will.
It is far less about crowing a champion than recouping revenue.
But at what cost?
As has been chronicled by ESPN, the minimum time frame for running a typical 16-team playoff that includes four rounds of best-of-seven series would be 55 days.
That would mean getting to such a postseason by Aug. 8, if
Oct. 1 is the cutoff point. That doesn’t leave much in the way of regular-season wiggle room if July 31, indeed, proves to be the resumption of play.
Understand, also, in that poll of general managers, as reported by ESPN, a third of the league’s general managers viewed Sept. 15 or earlier at the preferred conclusion for 2019-20.
As with thoroughbred racing’s 2020 Triple Crown, the 2019-20 NBA season has been undeniably altered.
But what is at stake transcends the revenue and the integrity of 2019-20. The NBA, even with a different, reduced revenue model, still can be the NBA.
It was before. Need be, it can be again.
But create an offseason where players are forced into hasty contract-option decisions, reopen free agency to tampering the very year the league office had planned to crack down, rush players back from a rush to completion of ‘19-20, and 2020-21 could become a season with its own asteri …
OK, no need to go there, yet. But what also has to be part of the equation in this time of uncertainty is the type of visionary approach that has helped separate Adam Silver’s NBA from other sports.
If Dec. 25 is to be the start of a 2020-21 season that runs the full 82 regular-season games plus playoffs, then when happens going forward with the regional-sports networks that also carry full schedules of Major League Baseball, in the case of the Heat and South Florida, with Fox Sports Florida (Marlins) and Fox Sports Sun (Rays). Yes, there are alternate channels, but not for many with basic cable setups. Already, several major sporting events have accepted it being time to move on.
For the NBA, this part of the calendar could have been its own, if already moved on to planning for 2020-21, with the draft in late June and free agency in July.
Instead, we wait, seasons colliding, all as what comes next
remains an abstract.
IN THE LANE
HITTING HOME: For Bam Adebayo, one element of concern about a potential NBA restart amid the new coronavirus pandemic hits home closer than even he acknowledged. In discussing apprehensions, the third-year Heat center noted to The Associated Press, “Some players like
Steve Nash used to lick his hands. Some people still have that in their routine. Some people wipe the sweat off their face and put it on the ball. It’s going to be weird how they try to control it.” The reality is that one of those “some players” is teammate and sometimes fellow Heat starter Kelly Olynyk, who tends to lick the fingers on both of his hands after missing an open shot, a habit the 6-foot-11 big man admitted he does not realize. The league currently is mandating players do not share balls during the individual voluntary drills at team practice facilities, with mandatory sanitizing of all balls after use. The game ball is selected by team captains prior to games, with it then occasionally toweled off by ball boys when necessary, typically before free-throw situations. A second, pre-selected backup game ball is kept by the scorers’ table.
FAMILIAR SPOT: Shane Battier again is in a familiar place, part of the rumor mill when it comes to the Detroit Pistons’ front office. Battier, the Heat’s vice president of basketball development and analytics, for the second time has been linked to Detroit’s search for a general manager, as he was in 2018, in the wake of the Pistons dismissal of former Heat coach
Stan Van Gundy. Battier, a forward on the Heat’s 2012 and ‘13 Big Three championship teams alongside LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, withdrew his name in 2018, citing his South Florida ties. Battier, 41, was the 1997 Michigan Mr. Basketball for his play at Birmingham Detroit Country Day. He is listed fourth on the Heat’s organizational chart of Basketball Operations Executives, behind only General Manager
Andy Elisburg, Vice President of Sports Media Relations Tim Don
ovan and Vice President of Player Programs Alonzo Mourning.
MOMENT IN TIME: Invited to address the Indianapolis Colts via teleconference, Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers noted the importance of seizing every potential championship moment, citing the Heat’s victory in the 2012 NBA Finals over the Oklahoma City Thunder, who have been unable to make it back to that level since. Rivers ended his talk by noting, “I don’t know if you remember the Oklahoma Thunder, when they had Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, James Harden, [ Serge] Ibaka. They lost to Miami in the Finals. And I remember in that last game, [ABC broadcasters] Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Breen were saying, ‘Well, it’s a tough loss for Oklahoma, but they’ll be back here every year.’ They’ve never been back. You cannot take it for granted.”
MOVING ON: So what happened to former Heat and FIU point guard Carlos Arroyo? As Bleacher Report chronicled, the 40-year-old former Puerto Rico Olympian has emerged as a major reggaeton star, with his March release of “Baila Reggaeton” viewed more than 4.6 million times on YouTube, with former Heat teammate Wade and Wade’s wife,
Gabrielle Union, dancing to it on Instagram. It turns out that Arroyo already was polished in the form during his Heat tenure, which included Pat Riley moving to the beat on the team’s practice floor. “Pat can dance,” Arroyo said. “But Pat dancing reggaeton, that’s something else.” Arroyo’s basketball these days is limited to the halfcourt Big3, having appeared with the circuit last year at AmericanAirlines Arena, with the league on hiatus this summer due to the pandemic.
NUMBER
75-1. Whimsical odds posted by BetOnline on Heat President Riley becoming the next coach of the New York Knicks, with Tom
Thibodeau the favorite at 1-2, followed by Mark Jackson at 7-2. The offshore book also has Phil
Jackson at 150-1. Riley coached the Knicks from 1991 to ’95, then faxing in his resignation to join the Heat as coach and president.