Should NBA skip right to playoffs when it returns?
The NBA would love to pick up the season right where it paused when league commissioner Adam Silver suspended it two weeks ago, but more and more signs are pointing to that being out of the question.
Between ESPN’s report that Labor Day weekend is the “loosest” drop-dead date to finish the NBA finals and immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci saying the coronavirus cases needs to decrease before the country returns to “some degree of normality,” the odds seems against the NBA resuming play next month.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting 68,440 COVID-19 cases with 994 deaths in the United States as of Thursday afternoon. The numbers are updated regularly at 9 a.m. Mondays through Fridays.
That’s nearly 15,000 more cases than Wednesday afternoon at 54,453 cases.
LeBron James told ESPN the league can’t go straight to the playoffs because “it discredits the 60-plus games that guys had fighting for that position,” but as those coronavirus case numbers show, this virus is bigger than the league and the four-time NBA MVP.
Those numbers are alarming and something the NBA should keep tracking when making the decision when and how to resume the season or continue it at all. There are 12 reported coronavirus player cases, but until every player is tested, there’s no way the league can say only those 12 have the virus.
If COVID-19 cases in the United States are still on the rise in mid-April, the league could extend the suspension for another 30 days in hopes to resume play by June 1, giving teams two weeks like a training camp to get back into playing shape.
The NBA wants to play the rest of the regular season, but again, COVID-19 is far bigger than the league. So, it should seriously consider just skipping the rest of the regular season and prepare for the playoffs.
Have a best-of-five series, which was the format for the first round from 1984 to 2002, for possibly every series except the finals. The league would take a financial hit in the millions for shortened television and gate revenue, but when the alternative could be no playoffs at all, that should make it easier to take.
The longer the suspension, the less likely the league will have a full 16-team playoff. The NBA could cut the playoffs in half, take the top four teams in each conference and have best-of-five in the conference semifinals and finals and close out the season with a best-of-seven series in the NBA finals.
The league had just 10 playoff teams in 1975 before going to 12 in 1977 and stayed that way until 1983 when the postseason expanded to the current format of 16 teams in 1984.
There’s a history of fewer playoff teams, but let’s just say all 16 make the postseason if the NBA decides to return to action as the league seems hell-bent on ending the season with a champion.
The NBA could focus on 16 teams, not 30, by going straight to the playoffs. That’s 200 or so fewer players out of the equation to contract the virus or spread it.
That would help league focus on finding a handful of venues to host the playoff games instead of monitoring all 30 NBA arenas.
Like the NCAA Tournament, the NBA could possibly have the Eastern Conference playoffs at one or two sites and the Western Conference playoffs at one or two sites in states where the virus isn’t nearly as widespread.
For example, West Virginia has just 54 reported cases.
Nebraska has 64. New Mexico is at 112. Maine has 147.
Those states have civic centers or arenas that could host a game. Now the state would have to be open to taking on that task, but states like New York that that has nearly half of those total COVID-19 cases in the U.S. with 32,966 shouldn’t host a playoff game.
The Brooklyn Nets, who'd be a seventh seed in the East, play in New York and have four reported players test positive with two-time finals MVP Kevin Durant being one.
California, which has nearly 3,000 cases, also shouldn’t have playoff games even with championship contenders – the Los Angeles Clippers and James' L.A Lakers – there.
Again, health and safety should take precedence over the dollar, but does the league test fans, media and anyone else who'd be in the arena or go back to one of its original plans of having no fans and just essential staff at the games?
This should all be part of the thinking process. The government may step in and go nope, can’t risk the health of many for a chosen few to play a game, but the league needs to be ready to proceed when it’s time to cross that bridge.
Those who want to the league to resume play with the regular season can say well, the players have been resting since March 11 when Silver suspended the season for “at least 30 days” after Utah Jazz all-star center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus.
However, they can't go somewhere and relax to the sound of birds, ocean waves.
This has been an uncomfortable and stressful rest. They’re being tested, wondering who in the league has tested positive and worrying about their family and friends contracting the virus.
On Thursday morning, Dr. Fauci addressed twotime NBA MVP Stephen Curry’s question of when the league could return to action by basically saying it needs to see coronavirus cases start to decline to make a better decision on the situation.
“We can start thinking about getting back to some degree of normality when the country as a whole has turned that corner and starts coming down,” said Fauci, the immunologist who has aided the White House in its attempts to address the virus.
No one wants the season to prematurely end, but this is an unprecedented situation that’d justify doing just that. Players want to play, fans want to watch them play and the league doesn’t want to lose more money.
But if a person caught the virus at an NBA game and later died, that’d be a beyond horrible look for the league.