Second Bubble For NBA’s Bottom Eight Teams Now Appears Unlikely
A report one month ago suggested that the NBA appeared likely to create a second campus/bubble environment in Chicago for the league’s bottom eight teams. The idea was for those teams left out of the Orlando restart to spend some time with their players during the offseason, conducting mini-training camps and inter-squad games in a single location.
However, according to Shams Charania and Sam Amick of The Athletic, there’s a growing belief that a second bubble site won’t happen. The Athletic’s duo reports that there’s also pessimism about those bottom eight teams getting to hold in-market minicamps for group workouts.
“There’s nothing happening,” said one general manager following a Tuesday call with the eight GMs and various league officials. “It’s a shame. It’s a huge detriment to these eight franchises that were left behind.”
With the NBA focusing on the success of the Orlando restart, discussions about plans for the bottom eight teams – the Warriors, Timberwolves, Cavaliers, Hawks, Bulls, Pistons, Knicks, and Hornets – have been inconsistent. As recently as last week, there seemed to be momentum building toward a plan to allow those clubs to hold practices and workouts, but that momentum has apparently stalled.
According to Charania and Amick, the National Basketball Players Association has safety concerns related to the idea of a second bubble amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. There are also financial and logistical complications associated with creating a smaller-scale version of the NBA’s Walt Disney World campus.
Charania and Amick suggest that the NBPA is more open to the idea of creating smaller, in-market bubbles for teams to host individual mini-camps in their respective cities. But it sounds as if that won’t happen by mid-August as initially hoped, if it happens at all.
The eight teams left out of the Orlando restart believe they’re at a potential competitive disadvantage by missing out on the player and culture development that other teams are getting this summer, sources tell The Athletic. Those clubs are expected to continue pushing for some form of offseason team activities to re-engage players and coaches. For now, they’re only permitted to hold 1-on-0 workouts at their practice facilities, with limited coach involvement.
Eastern Notes: O’Quinn, Thibodeau, Pacers, Sixers
A missed coronavirus test cost Sixers big man Kyle O’Quinn any chance to play on Monday, Shams Charania of The Athletic tweets. O’Quinn, who tweeted that it “slipped my mind,” became ineligible for the game because of his no-show but can rejoin the team upon a negative test.
We have more from the Eastern Conference:
- Tom Thibodeau has allies in the Knicks front office and that could lead to a better outcome than he had with the Bulls and Timberwolves, Steve Popper of Newsday contends. Leon Rose, the team’s president, is his former agent and new executive VP William Wesley also has a long-time business relationship with him. “I think that’s part of the equation obviously, my relationship with them,” Thibodeau said. “I’ve known them for over two decades.”
- Numerous full-time Pacers Sports and Entertainment employees have been laid off due to a decline in revenue resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, Andrew Smith of TheIndyChannel.com relays. The franchise did not specify how many employees were let go. “While we have been able to avoid impacts to our full-time staff during the last four months, the continued uncertainty of a return to fully-attended events have regrettably made further steps unavoidable,” Rick Fuson, president and COO of Pacers Sports and Entertainment, said in a statement.
- With Ben Simmons shifting to power forward, the Sixers have a glaring point guard issue, David Murphy of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes. Shake Milton, who moved into the starting lineup in their seeding opener against Indiana, posted no points, three assists and three turnovers in 19 minutes, though he bounced back with a strong showing – and a game-winning shot – on Monday.
NBA Tweaks Policy For Inconclusive COVID-19 Tests
The NBA has adjusted its policy for players who receive inconclusive results following a COVID-19 test, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, who reports that the change in protocol is designed to reduce the likelihood of a player missing a game due to a false positive.
According to Wojnarowski, the league’s new plan is for a player who gets an inconclusive result to get clearance in as little as 24 hours — to do so, he must return a negative test right away and then return a second negative within 60 minutes of the scheduled tipoff of his team’s next game.
Previously, the NBA’s policy called for a two-day quarantine following an inconclusive test or false positive, with the player required to return a pair of negative tests at least 24 hours apart to receive clearance. As we detailed last week, teams around the league were concerned about the possibility that that process would be too slow to clear a healthy player in time for an important game.
With the exception of a couple players who tested positive during their initial quarantine when they arrived in Orlando last month, the NBA has yet to have a player test positive for the coronavirus on its Walt Disney World campus.
However, with players being tested daily and inconclusive test results occurring in approximately one in 200 tests, per Wojnarowski, it seems inevitable that false positives could become an issue at some point during the seeding games or postseason. The league’s protocol adjustment should reduce the odds of such an incident affecting a player’s availability for his next game.
Inconclusive COVID-19 Test Results Continue To Concern Teams
A Kings player received an inconclusive coronavirus test result on Wednesday and was required to re-quarantine for the last two days, according to Adrian Wojnarowski and Marc Spears of ESPN.
When a player receives an inconclusive result – or a false positive – he is required to go back into quarantine and must receive two consecutive negative tests in the next 48 hours in order to be cleared. As Wojnarowski and Spears report, the affected Kings player met that criteria, receiving negative results on Thursday and Friday, and should be good to go for the team’s first seeding game on Friday night vs. San Antonio.
Although the Sacramento player who got the inconclusive coronavirus test result won’t miss any games as a result, there’s “significant concern” among teams at the Orlando campus that a similar situation could cost a club a key player for an important seeding game or even a playoff contest.
According to Wojnarowski and Spears, the NBA has been working with doctors and scientists to try to find a way to shorten that 48-hour quarantine period following an inconclusive test without compromising the safety of the player or the rest of the campus. However, science and technology limitations make it difficult to accelerate that process, sources tell ESPN.
The fact that no NBA players at the Orlando campus have tested positive for COVID-19 since initially clearing quarantine three weeks ago is a great sign, and the league’s top priority will be to continue that trend. At the same time, the NBA has to be hoping that an inconclusive test and a subsequent 48-hour quarantine won’t result in a star player missing a crucial game in the coming weeks.
Restart Notes: ’20/21 Plan, Bubbles, COVID-19 Tests, More
The NBA’s “re-opening” night on Thursday was a major success, with both games going back and forth and coming down the wire, as the Jazz and Lakers scored winning baskets in the final seconds of their respective contests.
While the NBA’s “bubble” experiment at Walt Disney World is off to a promising start, the league is facing an uncertain future for next season — even if the 2019/20 campaign can be finished without any further hitches.
After NBPA executive director Michele Roberts spoke this week about the possibility of the NBA playing at a single site in ’20/21 as well, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported (via Twitter) that the league’s priority is till to get fans into arenas next season. However, unless the coronavirus pandemic is far more under control four months from now, it’s hard to see how the NBA will be able to fill teams’ home arenas by December 1, the proposed start date for next season.
As Wojnarowski notes – and as an early-July report indicated – the NBA continues to brainstorm potential ideas for the 2020/21 season and remains in the early stages of planning, with everything on the table. According to Wojnarowski, playing games in “regional pods” is one idea that has been discussed, but the league’s preference would be for any such “bubbles” to be finite in length — for instance, a month or two in, followed by a month out.
That report three weeks ago from Alex Silverman of Morning Consult suggested that the NBA is mulling the possibility of pushing next season’s start date well into 2021 (perhaps to March) in the hopes that a coronavirus vaccine or improved therapeutic treatment for COVID-19 will be available, increasing the odds of getting fans into arenas by then. For now, the plan for the ’20/21 campaign remains very much up in the air.
Here’s more on the NBA’s restart:
- As Andrew Keh of The New York Times writes, “bubbles” seem to be working for the sports that have gone in that direction, but it’s unlikely that leagues will want to continue playing indefinitely in secluded campus-like environments.
- The NBA announced this week that it’s launching a new community program to provide thousands of no-cost COVID-19 tests in Orlando and in team markets around the country. The league has been wary of the optics of its players being tested daily and getting speedy results while there have been testing shortages and delays for the public, so this program appears designed to help address that issue.
- In an interesting story, Josh Robbins of The Athletic looks at how a 30,000-square-foot ballroom at Walt Disney World has been transformed into a warehouse to accommodate upwards of 1,000 delivered packages per day. As Robbins details, players have been getting plenty of items delivered to Disney World in an effort to make the NBA’s campus feel more like home. “I’m about $5 grand in with Amazon since I’ve been in here,” Heat big man Udonis Haslem said. “I’m good now. I don’t think I need anything else for the next three months. … I got a coffee machine. I got some snacks. I got my leg pumps. I got everything.”
- Within ESPN’s breakdown of Thursday’s restart, Tim Bontemps contends that the virtual fan boards around the courts – a good idea in theory – were glitchy and were “more of a distraction than an aid to the viewing experience.”
NBA, NBPA Reach Agreements On Disability Insurance, Salary Withholding
The NBA and NBPA have reached an agreement on a revamped insurance benefit for players who suffer career-ending injuries, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. According to Wojnarowski, the new disability policy will pay players $2.5MM in the event of a career-ending injury sustained on or off the court.
The previous insurance policy for career-ending injuries paid out approximately $312K — the NBPA had been pushing to increase that amount in the midst of future salary cap uncertainty and the coronavirus pandemic, writes Wojnarowski. The new policy will also apply to career-ending ailments related to COVID-19 complications, Woj adds.
Sources tell ESPN that the new insurance benefit will apply to all active players up to 35 years old and would be paid out in addition to the money owed on the player’s existing contract. As ESPN’s Bobby Marks points out (via Twitter), NBA clubs already have a disability policy in place for their top earners who suffer major injuries, but that policy is designed to protect the teams rather than the players.
Meanwhile, the NBA and the players’ union have also reached an agreement to continue withholding 25% of players’ pay checks in escrow, Wojnarowski reports. That deal has been in place since May 15 and is designed to help maintain a balance of the season’s basketball-related income between teams and players.
The NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement calls for approximately a 50/50 revenue split between teams and players. With a portion of the season’s games canceled and the NBA preparing to bring in less revenue than initially anticipated, withholding a portion of player pay checks allows the two sides to begin balancing the books.
According to Marks (via Twitter), there’s already about $600MM sitting in a pair of escrow accounts that has been withheld from players by the NBA and its teams. Once the end-of-season accounting is completed, the NBA will be able to determine if players received more than 51% of this season’s BRI. If that’s the case, the money in escrow will be returned to the teams rather than the players.
No New COVID-19 Cases In Latest NBA Testing
Major League Baseball may dealing with a serious coronavirus problem, but the NBA’s bubble appears to be holding. The latest round of testing at the Walt Disney World campus resulted in no new cases of COVID-19, the league and its players union tweeted in a joint statement. No positive results were recorded among the 344 players who have been tested since July 20.
The news comes at an opportune time as the NBA prepares to tip off its schedule of reseeding games tomorrow night. This is the third round of testing since players, coaches and staff members reported to Orlando roughly three weeks ago, notes Brad Townsend of The Dallas Morning News (Twitter link). Two cases were reported from July 7 to 13 and none from July 13 to 19.
Several players have tested positive in their home markets during that time. They are required to return two consecutive negative tests at least 24 hours apart before being given clearance to travel to Disney World. Players who receive excused absences to leave the campus are required to quarantine for at least four days upon returning.
Roberts Talks Revenue Loss, Possible 2020/21 Campus, CBA
In a wide-ranging phone conversation with Tim Bontemps of ESPN today, National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts discussed a variety of topics pertaining to the league’s immediate future. Key on everyone’s mind recently has been the success thus far of the 2019/20 season’s Orlando campus, wherein no NBA players or travel team personnel have tested positive for COVID-19 after clearing their quarantines for the past three weeks.
Roberts acknowledged that another possible campus set-up, with NBA players stationed at a single, isolated site with frequent testing, seems like a realistic possibility for the 2020/21 NBA season, given the current state of the novel coronavirus in the US.
“If tomorrow looks like today, I don’t know how we say we can do it differently,” Roberts said. “So it may be that, if the bubble is the way to play, then that is likely gonna be the way we play next season, if things remain as they are.”
The 2020/21 NBA season is tentatively slated to tip off on December 1, though the NBPA hasn’t approved that start date.
[RELATED: Financial, Logistical Uncertainty Looms Over 2020/21 NBA Season]
Roberts went on to commend the safety precautions implemented within the Disney World campus setup.
“The medical facilities and the physicians on campus, I’m not worried about anyone getting sick and not being able to get absolutely immediate health care,” she said. “I am completely satisfied that we’ve come up with the right protocol.”
The NBA and the NBPA are bracing for a significant loss in league revenue, stemming from the loss of fan attendance for much or all of the 2020/21 season. Both sides will negotiate handling the fallout of these losses and are “beginning some very high-level discussions with respect to what the potential issues are,” Roberts told Bontemps.
Roberts also noted that she does not intend to use the revenue conversations between the NBA and NBPA as a moment to opt out of the NBA’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement for a total renegotiation ahead of the December 15, 2022 deadline for doing so.
“That’s not something that has been addressed and, I would venture to say, is not going to happen.”
Restart Notes: COVID-19, Campus, Silver, Drug Testing
Less than a week into the Major League Baseball season, more than a dozen players and staffers on the Miami Marlins tested positive for the coronavirus, resulting in multiple postponed games and serious questions about the viability of MLB’s plan to complete its season. However, because the NBA has gathered its teams in a single location, the league remains confident in its plan despite observing the MLB outbreak from afar, writes Mark Medina of USA Today.
“I don’t even compare the two,” Clippers head coach Doc Rivers said. “What they’re doing and what we’re doing is so different. I like what we’re doing.”
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to feel safe here, and I feel super safe,” Pelicans guard J.J. Redick said of the NBA’s campus. “This is an environment here I feel has been really good. The protocols are in place. It’s hard to compare what baseball or the NFL is doing because it’s not what we’re doing. We’re doing something completely different. But obviously we’re all watching to see how baseball and football work given the uncertainty of next season as well.”
As Medina points out, the NBA isn’t ready to run a victory lap just yet, considering its season won’t be over for another two-plus months, and plenty could go wrong between now and then. However, the last coronavirus testing update issued by the league indicated that there had been zero new positive tests on the Walt Disney World campus, which bodes well for the NBA’s plan.
Here’s more on the restart:
- While MLB’s coronavirus outbreak may not be of immediate concern to the NBA, it will give the league more to think about in relation to its 2020/21 season, writes Joe Mussatto of The Oklahoman. The ’20/21 campaign is tentatively scheduled to begin as early as December and the hope is that teams will be able to play in their home arenas.
- NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who is scheduled to make his first appearance at the Florida campus this week, said he thinks the league’s plan is going “very well” so far, as Marc Stein of The New York Times writes. “I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re on the right track,” Silver said.
- The NBA sent a reminder today to teams that random drug testing for steroids, PEDs, masking agents, and diuretics will resume on Thursday when seeding games get underway, a source tells Marc J. Spears of The Undefeated (Twitter link). The NBA and NBPA previously reached an agreement to resume PED and steroid testing this summer, while marijuana testing remains paused.
- As Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press details, the NBA’s efforts to keep its Orlando campus safe even extend to new protocols for the handling of referee whistles.
Pacific Notes: Zubac, Okobo, Len, Barnes, Holmes
Center Ivica Zubac, who has recovered from COVID-19, played 13 minutes in the Clippers’ third Orlando scrimmage on Monday and appears ready for the league restart, Andrew Greif of the Los Angeles Times writes. Zubac, who signed a four-year, $28.5MM contract last summer, contributed two points and six rebounds during his short stint.
“I don’t care how much you work out, a basketball game, an NBA basketball game is different and so you get winded,” Clippers head coach Doc Rivers said. “But I thought he did what Zub does, he clogged up the paint, he rolled for us, he did a lot of good things.”
We have more from the Pacific Division:
- Suns guard Elie Okobo participated in practice on Monday, Gina Mizell tweets. Okobo’s arrival in Orlando was delayed due to undisclosed reasons. He has extra incentive to perform well in the restart, as his $1.66MM salary for next season is not guaranteed.
- Kings center Alex Len‘s status for the team’s opening game at the Orlando campus remains uncertain, James Ham of NBC Sports Bay Area tweets. Len rejoined the club approximately 10 days ago after he recovered from his own bout with COVID-19. He has yet to go through a full contact session, Ham adds.
- Big man Richaun Holmes and forward Harrison Barnes participated in the Kings’ final scrimmage on Monday, Ham notes. Holmes, who had to serve a 10-day quarantine after violating league protocols, had six points and five rebounds in 18 minutes. Barnes, who overcame a battle with the coronavirus, finished with 12 points and six rebounds in 21 minutes.