The NBA announced its plan to return to play later this summer, with 22 teams going to Orlando to play at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex. The plan was agreed upon by 29 of the 30 teams, with Portland as the lone exception, and it now moves on to the players’ association to ratify and negotiate terms, both for this season’s return and how next season will take place.
There are financials to figure out and start and end dates for a 2020-21 season to be determined — the owners proposed a Dec. 1 date, which came as a “surprise” to the NBPA — but it seems as though we are indeed moving closer to basketball being played. One of the biggest questions facing the league’s return is the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic, where Florida just saw its highest new case count on Thursday.
Silver said in an appearance on TNT’s Inside The NBA that they are constantly monitoring the situation and are still in “the first inning” with the understanding that a plan was needed for a return, but factors beyond their control will dictate if that plan can take place. If it does go on and we do get to playoff basketball, the question of what happens if a positive test of a player happens in the middle of a series looms large. Charles Barkley asked exactly that, wondering if a team would need to pull out of the playoffs due to a positive test, with Silver saying he and the league don’t believe that to be the case.
“The answer is we don’t believe we would need to,” Silver said. “We’ve been dealing with a group of our experts plus public health authorities down in Florida now. The view is that if we are testing every day, and we are able to trace in essence the contacts that player has had, we’re able to in essence contain that player and separate him from his team, and we’re continuing to test every day, the belief is we would not have to shut down if a single player tested positive.”
That the league will be doing daily testing of everyone in the bubble is what gives them this opportunity, given most experts say the best way to limit spread is to test and contact trace to understand who is impacted and who needs to be isolated. Still, while Silver says “we would not have to shut down” for a single positive test, that didn’t fully answer the question of if a team would need to, should tracing indicate much of that team has been in contact with the player in question.
All of this is to say, there are still many unknowns and the league is proceeding with the understanding that things are always capable of changing, but the hope is they can move forward even with a positive test.