NBA is past due to come up with plan

What’s the plan, Adam Silver?

Because Major League Baseball has a plan to return to play. Monday, it was reported that the league’s owners approved a plan to restart spring training in June with an 82-game regular season starting in early July in front of empty stands in home ballparks.

And last week, the NFL released its 2020 schedule. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking for the league to publicly project playing a normal schedule in September, but they have contingency plans, too.

Yes, these leagues might need to pivot — to make changes as circumstances change for better or for worse amid this global pandemic — but they’re pushing forward. They’re erring on the side of action.

And then there’s the NBA, which shut down two months ago today and yet seems nowhere near close to a return.

Sure, there has been conversation and shuffling, but where’s the plan? Where’s the action?

It as if Silver is waiting for a perfect environment — a return to normal — to make a move.

But we all know that moment isn’t coming any time soon. It’s probably never going to arrive.

That’s no such thing as “normal” in life — there is only adaptation to constant change. Sometimes the changes come so slow that you don’t notice the adaptations. Sometimes — like now — change is forced upon you at rates so fast you can hardly keep up.

Right now, the NBA is not keeping up, and in a re-set sports marketplace, that could bring about even more dire financial ramifications than already expected.

Silver is running out of time to come up with a viable plan, too.

The NBA commissioner told players Friday that no decision needs to be made until June. Yet a proposal to return this summer would take at least a few weeks to organize and ratify with the players, after which there would need to be a period of time to travel, isolate, and then practice. (These players need to get in shape — they are also carrying the quarantine 15.)

So even if games are

played in regional hubs, the regular season would, at best, re-start in July, which means that play could easily stretch into September — the same month the 202021 preseason is set to start.

Good luck trying to convince shadow commissioners LeBron James and Chris Paul that they’ll only have a few weeks of an “offseason” after this campaign finishes.

There is, of course, a more straightforward option: Jump right to the playoffs.

Perhaps the only silver lining of this pandemic is that it’s forcing the world to cut the pretense. It’s real bad out here, we don’t have time for nonsense.

So tell the Warriors and all the other teams that have been eliminated from postseason contention to stay home and enjoy their summer as best they can — you’ll see them in the fall. The fact that the Silver and the league cannot yet bring it upon itself to cut the obvious fat is telling and concerning.

Because if the NBA really wanted to cut the pretense, it would go well beyond telling the Warriors they’re done — it would jump right to the second round of the playoffs when play returns. The first round of the postseason is an annual cash-grab, one that’s unnecessary given the current circumstances.

The bottom seeds — Nos. 8, 7, and sometimes 6 — have next to no chance to winning the title every year. Yet the playoffs have eight seeds so that mediocre teams can be rewarded with two home playoff games — some extra revenue.

Well, that revenue won’t be there this year because there won’t be fans or “home games”. So why bother bringing the sub-.500 Nets or Magic to the Eastern Conference biodome?

Will some of these conversations and negotiations be uncomfortable for Silver? Of course. Might he have to cross the NBA players, or worse, do to do something that doesn’t play well on social media? Absolutely.

But NBA owners pay Silver seven figures annually to make big, tough decisions in moments like this. It’s time for him to show he’s worth it.