When’s the right time to resume playing NBA basketball? | Keith Pompey

This is tough.

On the one hand, you want the NBA season to resume. You miss basketball. An NBA game would be a great two-hour diversion from our coronavirus-pandemic reality.

On the other hand, you can argue that sports are irrelevant at this moment. It is a time to focus on your loved ones and their well-being. It’s a time to pray for the more than 21.7 million Americans who filed for unemployment in response to the pandemic. It’s a time to remember those who lost their lives to COVID-19.

Globally, there have been around 2,310,000 confirmed cases with 158,700 deaths as of Saturday night. There have been around 740,000 confirmed cases and 38,900 deaths in the United States.

As has been the case globally, COVID-19 patients are pushing some Philadelphia-area hospitals to near capacity.

Yet President Donald Trump released federal guidelines Thursday for a slow return to normalcy. The PGA Tour also announced plans to resume its season in June with the first four events closed to fans. And, until Friday, there had been optimism that the NBA would resume some semblance of the season.

That’s when commissioner Adam Silver said there was no timetable for the NBA’s return.

The league’s regular season was suspended March 11 after Utah’s Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. Commissioner Adam Silver announced the next day that play would be halted for at least 30 days.

» READ MORE: NBA, NBPA agree to reduce players’ salaries beginning May 15 in an event of permanent season cancellation

The new expectation is the NBA might not resume until July. Silver told TNT on April 7 that the league won’t have enough information to make a decision until May at the earliest. On Friday, he said there’s no cutoff date in regards to canceling the reason and returning on preparing for the 2020-21 campaign.

But league and the National Basketball Players Association agreed to reduce players’ salaries beginning with their May 15 paycheck in the event of permanently canceling the season. While Silver won’t give a timeline, there’s a sense the league could know by June if and how many games will be canceled.

“There’s a lot that’s changing quickly,” Silver said. "We may be in a very different position some number of weeks from now. But it was why I initially announced at the beginning of April that I felt with confidence we wouldn’t be able to make any decisions in the month of April.

“I should clarify that I didn’t mean to suggest that on May 1st, I would be in a position. I just think as I sit here today, there’s too much unknown to set a timeline, even too much unknown to say, here are the precise variables.”

Like with the PGA Tour, the NBA was expected to return without fans in the beginning.

Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small confirmed on March 31 that he’s attempting to lure the league to Boardwalk Hall for the playoffs.

Atlantic City, Orlando, Hawaii, Louisville, and Las Vegas are possible locations for a 16-team playoff minus fans. The Bahamas have been mentioned as another potential site. Those locations are expected to be a bubble-like atmosphere where players would be in isolation.

But on Friday, Silver said that’s not a done deal.

“In terms of bubble-like concepts, many of them have been proposed to us, and we’ve only listened,” Silver said. “We’re not seriously engaged yet in that type of environment because I can’t answer the first part of your question, which is, what precisely would we need to see in order to feel that that environment provided the need health and safety for our players and everyone involved?”

Nor did he rule out resuming the season with regular-season games.

No one can deny the financial benefit of resuming play. ABC/ESPN and Turner pay the league $2.6 billion to show its games. Looking to fill a programming void, ESPN televised H-O-R-S-E competitions and players-only NBA 2K tournaments.

Even before the suspension, the league was preparing to play without fans in attendance and is reportedly willing to play through August. It could provide plenty of programming.

But questions remain.

When will it be safe to return?

The NBA was one of the first leagues to shut down amid the pandemic.

“I think there is a sense that we can continue to take a leading role as we learn more in coming up with an appropriate regimen and protocol for returning to business,” Silver said. “I think there’s a recognition from [the owners] that this is bigger than our business, certainly bigger than sports, and that there is great symbolism around sports in this country, and that to the extent we do find a path back, it will be very meaningful for Americans.”

Plus, no one wants to keep getting delayed like the Chinese Basketball Association.

The CBA’s season has been suspended since Jan. 24 because of the pandemic and has had setbacks in trying to return.

The league was scheduled to resume play on April 15. Now it may not return until July at the earliest. There’s a possibility the league will cancel the remainder of its season.

Leagues around the world are closely monitoring the CBA’s situation.

» READ MORE: Commissioner Adam Silver relays there’s no timetable for NBA return

If the NBA went to a bubble-like concept, the one advantage it woulld have is that all participating teams would be in a quarantined site, where they would be tested frequently. But even if they don’t do it, a return to play would require the league to secure a significant amount of quick-turnaround tests to ensure players, coaches, and staff are safe.

How would that look to the public, considering if there remains a shortage of tests?

That could duplicate the public relations nightmare the league endured when players were able to receive testing not available to most Americans in the weeks after Gobert’s positive test.

“It goes without doubt that we have to ensure that front-line healthcare workers are taken care of before we begin talking about NBA players or sports,” Silver said. “As I said, we’re not in a position to know more at this point.”

It would become a worse PR hit if someone contracted COVID-19 while at the quarantined site.

So what would it take for the NBA to return? Universal testing? Perhaps antibody testing? Does all of that have to be available before the league deems it OK to return?

“We know we need large-scale testing,” he said. “As for the universal testing, there are different tests being proposed. They may have different uses in different situations.

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So while we miss basketball, there’s a lot of uncertainty at this moment.

We do, however, have to get back to normalcy. At this stage, it’s just tough to know when is the right time.