Coronavirus Notes: Plumlee, Martins, More
Speaking on Tuesday to Mike Singer of The Denver Post, Nuggets center Mason Plumlee said “people are very optimistic” that the 2019/20 NBA season will be resumed and completed. Denver’s former NBPA rep, Plumlee suggested that he has learned from union meetings that there are “a lot of proposals” out there, with strategies being developed to resume play — of course, none of those scenarios will involve fans in attendance.
“People know that we’re playing for the TV at this point. It’s unrealistic to expect any kind of attendance,” Plumlee told Singer in a phone interview. “I know that they’ve talked about cutting down the travel party. I’ve heard proposals of one city, two cities, three cities with 10 teams (each), an expedited finish to the season or a differentiated version of the playoffs.”
Plumlee also expressed confidence that if and when the season is resumed, players will get a ramping-up period of at least a couple weeks, with that time essentially serving as a de facto training camp.
“Some people were pushing for four (weeks), some for two,” Plumlee said. “That remains to be seen. I don’t think that they’ll just call everybody up and within the week we’ll be having live games.”
Here’s more on the NBA’s coronavirus-related stoppage and potential plans to resume play:
- As Singer relays, Plumlee is curious to find out what next season’s schedule would look like if the 2019/20 campaign runs deep into the summer. The Nuggets big man sounds open to the December-August season proposed by Hawks CEO Steve Koonin prior to the pandemic. “It’s interesting, I know a lot of people have quoted the Atlanta Hawks (CEO), but there has been thought around starting the season later anyway based on our fall (TV) ratings,” Plumlee said. “A lot of it has to do with next season as well and if there’s a willingness to start next season in November or December. Maybe this is just something that leads to a new NBA schedule, we don’t know.”
- Magic CEO Alex Martins confirmed on Tuesday that the NBA is willing to extend its 2019/20 season into September if necessary, as Roy Parry of The Orlando Sentinel writes. “Our league has decided that we’re going to try to get in as much of our season and playoffs as the data will allow us to,” Martins told a local task force for reopening businesses. “We’ll play as late as Labor Day if we have to and – as was reported this past week – we’ve been having initial discussions about even delaying the start of next season based on trying to get as much as this season in as possible.”
- In order to better understand COVID-19 and promote efforts to develop a vaccine, the NBA and its players are supporting a Mayo Clinic study for antibodies using blood-based tests, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
- In case you missed it, here’s our Monday roundup of coronavirus-related notes.
BIG3 Postponing Quarantined Tournament, 2020 Season
The BIG3 will postpone a quarantined, reality show-style, three-on-three tournament that the league had been hoping to launch in May, reports Mark Medina of USA Today. According to Medina, the BIG3’s 2020 regular season, which had been scheduled to tip off on June 20, will also be delayed.
A source tells Medina that the quarantined tournament will be pushed back to August or September, while the start of the regular season will be postponed until sometime in the fall or winter.
“It’s a fluid situation,” a person familiar with the situation told Medina. “It’s hard to provide a fixed date, but it’s happening.”
As we outlined in March, the BIG3 is aiming to hold a 16-player tournament in which all participants are quarantined together in a single Los Angeles-area home. The televised show would broadcast the three-on-three games in addition to capturing behind-the-scenes footage of the players living in the house — media production company Endemal, which has produced Big Brother, is expected to be involved.
The BIG3 had initially planned to launch the tournament in April or May, but is still working on finalizing the participants. Additionally, since the BIG3 is planning on conducting coronavirus tests on all the players and officials involved in the event, the league is sensitive to ongoing testing shortages elsewhere in the country. The league also wants to address safety concerns for players who would be traveling in from out of state.
BIG3 founder Ice Cube had hinted on Monday that the event would have to be delayed, suggesting that the timeline is somewhat out of the league’s hands.
“The BIG3 is ready to go but we can’t move faster than the government and the networks,” he tweeted. “We’re in a holding pattern until restrictions and schedules are worked out, ya dig?”
Coronavirus Notes: Team Owners, Christmas Day, More
There’s no consensus among the NBA’s 30 team owners on when or how to resume play, Nets owner Joe Tsai said last week as part of a virtual seminar (hat tip to NetsDaily). As Tsai explained, a club’s place in the NBA standings may go a long way toward determining whether team ownership is prioritizing finishing the 2019/20 season.
“The reality is everybody is still trying to figure things out with the hope that maybe we can reopen the season —the current season— because … think about this: the Los Angeles Lakers or the Milwaukee Bucks, they’re in first place when the season got suspended,” Tsai said. “There’s a chance of them going for the championship. Of course, they want to play. The players want to play. The ownership wants to play. Then, there are other teams, if you’re in 28th place, maybe this season isn’t that important. So there’s a difference of opinion among the owners as well.”
The Nets have been a middle-of-the-pack team in 2019/20. If the season ended today, they’d be the No. 7 seed in the East, meaning their playoff run might be brief. However, they could make some noise in the postseason if Kyrie Irving and/or Kevin Durant are able to return from injuries. For his part, Tsai declined to offer his opinion on the NBA’s potential plans.
“We’re one individual team but we’re also part of the league, so I’m kind of under a gag order as to what I really think about what the NBA should do,” Tsai said, per NetsDaily.
Here’s more on the NBA’s hiatus and potential plans to resume the season:
- In a roundtable discussion with The Athletic’s MLB and NHL experts (Ken Rosenthal and Pierre LeBrun) about the possibility of sports restarting, Shams Charania offers some details on the NBA’s thinking. Charania confirms that the NBA is tentatively targeting Christmas Day for the start of its 2020/21 season, adding that the federal government has indicated it will help the NBA and any league looking to resume play.
- In an opinion column, Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News argues that no matter how long it takes to resume play, the NBA should prioritize completing its 2019/20 season in order to allow teams and players to finish what they started.
- According to a survey conducted by ESPN, the majority of fans are in favor of watching televised sports played behind closed doors rather than waiting for sports to resume only when fans are permitted to attend.
Coronavirus Notes: Health Risks, Lin, LeBron, Facilities
Several NBA general managers are expressing concern over the safety of their coaching staffs and other personnel if the league resumes its season, writes Baxter Holmes of ESPN. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has determined that the coronavirus presents higher risk factors to older adults and people with underlying health conditions, which will factor into decisions on who will be allowed into a “bubble” environment.
“Based on all the information that we have today, probably people over 60 with preexisting conditions can’t go, for sure, no matter what their titles are,” one general manager told Holmes. “Whether it’s a father of the star player or whether it’s the general manager of the team, they can’t go there.”
The NBA is considering a bubble concept, with all its games taking place in a central location such as Las Vegas or Orlando. We learned this week that players and coaches will be permitted to bring their families with them for however long it takes to finish the season. The executives Holmes talked to agreed that once the concept gets closer to reality, teams will be forced to make difficult decisions on who qualifies as essential.
“The one area you don’t want to skimp on is the medical,” a GM said. “The coaching part of it, you could probably get by with a head coach, that’s it.”
There’s more coronavirus news to pass along:
- Former NBA player Jeremy Lin tells Steve Serby of The New York Post that life in China means constant testing for the virus as he waits for the CBA season to resume. “I got tested before quarantine and after quarantine,” Lin said, “and honestly, anywhere you go any time, every restaurant, every mall, everything everywhere, every time I enter my apartment, I get my temperature checked, too. They’re constantly monitoring.”
- LeBron James has the most to lose if the season can’t be completed, writes Dan Woike of The Los Angeles Times. James has the Lakers on top of the Western Conference with a 49-14 record, and at age 35 he may not have a better chance to win another ring. Woike lists the Bucks, Clippers, Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni and the fans as other potential losers.
- In case you missed it, some practice facilities can reopen Friday, but at least half of the league’s teams are in states where stay-at-home orders are still in effect.
Families Must Be Allowed In Bubble City
The NBA will not agree to a “bubble concept” to restart the season unless players and coaches can bring their families with them, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported on SportsCenter (video link).
The bubble concept, in which games would be played in one city such as Las Vegas or Orlando, has been floated around since the early weeks of the hiatus. Isolating players from their families is currently not on the table, according to Windhorst.
“The NBA is not interested right now in a bubble where they could not bring their families in,” Windhorst said.
Earlier this week, Windhorst’s ESPN colleague Adrian Wojnarowski suggested that 15,000 tests for the novel coronavirus would be needed for the season to be safely resumed and completed. Windhorst’s sources believe that figure could go much higher. And that would be problematic, since there are not enough tests to go around for the general public.
“It could be 100,000 because you have to keep an eye on the testing,” he said. “Right now, the NBA is not interested at all in taking any test that would go away from somebody who wants a test or needs a test.”
Windhorst estimates that to put together games in a bubble city, 1,500 people would be required, from “hotel maids to scoreboard operators to the players and coaches themselves.”
Testing would also have to be available for their families, which is why 100,000 of them might be needed.
“Without the testing, which you need to get everybody in the bubble, and without the expansive test you need to get the families in, the NBA is not willing to go there right now,” he said.
Next Season Could Be Pushed To December
There is growing support from NBA team owners to delay the start of the 2020/2021 season until December, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the league’s Board of Governors continued discussions on Friday about pushing back next season from its usual October launch date.
By pushing the start of the season to December, the NBA could increase its chances of having fans in the arenas for as many games as possible. These discussions are independent of whether this season is ultimately resumed or canceled, Wojnarowski adds.
Talks have centered on starting the season prior to Christmas and completing it in late July or early August. The NBA draft and free agency would be pushed back until after the season.
Earlier in the day, the Board voted to postpone the draft lottery and the draft combine. It hasn’t voted on delaying the June 25 draft but that seems like a formality at this point.
NBA Postpones Draft Lottery, Combine Indefinitely
3:41pm: As expected, the NBA has indefinitely postponed the lottery and combine, sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
11:21am: Now that the calendar has turned to May, the NBA will have to start making some decisions about its own calendar, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times, who points to the May 19 draft lottery and subsequent draft combine as upcoming events that will need to be addressed. Both the lottery and combine are expected to be officially postponed soon, tweets Stein.
[RELATED: Tentative 2020 NBA Draft Dates, Deadlines]
As Stein explains (via Twitter), as long as there’s still hope that the resumption of the 2019/20 season is possible, it doesn’t make sense for the NBA to move forward with its full pre-draft process. The lottery, in particular, is tied to the final regular-season standings, so if there’s still a chance that those standings could change, the lottery will have to wait.
Anthony Slater of The Athletic, who wrote earlier this week about the possibility of the lottery being delayed, heard from one executive that front offices would likely want at least three weeks or so between the lottery and the draft to give teams time to adjust to their exact placement.
[RELATED: What 2020 Lottery Odds Would Look Like If Season Doesn’t Resume]
Currently, the draft is scheduled for June 25, but it will certainly be postponed too if the season can be resumed, since the NBA will want the draft to take place in the offseason. Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer wrote this week that league sources expect it to be pushed back to August or September — the exact date will hinge in large part on if and when the season can be completed.
As for the combine, even with a two- or three-month delay, it’s hard to imagine it taking place as it normally would. While the NBA could formally postpone it for now, the event may have to eventually be canceled. Still, I’d imagine the league office is exploring virtual alternatives to the usual format, with teams likely pushing the NBA for a way to access prospects’ medical information that would typically be collected at the combine.
Coronavirus Notes: Facilities, “Bubble” Concept, Vegas, More
The NBA has said it will allow teams to reopen their practice facilities as early as May 8, one week from today. However, as Sam Amick and Joe Vardon of The Athletic detail, at least half of the league’s 30 teams are located in areas that have stay-at-home orders in place beyond that date, and some teams without those mandates in place are still weighing whether or not to actually reopen their facilities next Friday.
Amick and Vardon note that the NBA has said it will attempt to make “alternative arrangements” for teams in areas that won’t be open for business by next Friday. The Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, and Kings are lobbying California Governor Gavin Newsom to include them in the second phase of the state’s reopening plan in the hopes of returning to their facilities by the third week of May, sources tell The Athletic.
Within their report, The Athletic’s duo also digs into the extensive safety measures the league has put in place for teams as they reopen facilities and explores the competitive imbalance concerns that could arise if certain teams are back at their facilities while others are still locked out.
“The thing I keep hearing is the whole competitive advantage idea,” a player on a team that could resume individual workouts next week told The Athletic. “If we open up half the teams’ facilities when it’s safe, what’s a team like Brooklyn going to do? That’s a question because I certainly have no idea what that looks like.”
Here’s more on the issues the NBA is working through as it considers how and when to resume play:
- If the NBA attempts to resume the season in a “bubble” location, what would that look like? Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst of ESPN break it down, examining how many people would need to be in the bubble, what role COVID-19 testing would play, and how long it would take to finish the season. Interestingly, sources tell Bontemps and Windhorst that the league has rejected the idea of quarantining players without their family members.
- The ESPN duo also estimates that if the NBA is intent on playing the rest of the regular season, it would take 33 days to do so, with no more than 55 days required for a full postseason. The league could cut back on that 88-day total by reducing or eliminating the rest of the regular season and/or by tweaking its playoff format.
- While Las Vegas was initially viewed as the most likely location if the NBA were to move forward with a “bubble” plan, recent comments made by Mayor Carolyn Goodman didn’t make a good impression on the league’s power brokers, writes Chris Mannix of SI.com. Goodman suggested in a CNN interview that she was willing to offer up the city’s citizens as a control group to assess what happens when all coronavirus-related restrictions are lifted.
- ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Thursday that the idea of starting the 2020/21 NBA season in December and having it run through July or August is gaining some momentum. With that in mind, ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Insider link) goes into detail on what a new calendar might look like. The highlights include free agency opening on August 30, the trade deadline falling on April 8, and the Finals starting on August 1. Marks also suggests moving the draft to September 8, delaying it until after the first week of free agency.
Fertitta Confirms He Has No Interest In Selling Shares Of Rockets
Reports over the last couple months have suggested that Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has been one of the NBA team owners hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. Many of Fertitta’s hundreds of businesses are restaurants, casinos, and entertainment destinations that have been closed since stay-at-home orders began.
However, speaking to Sam Amick of The Athletic, Fertitta insisted that any concerns about his financial situation have been overstated.
“I have cash flow to last me a long, long time with no restaurants opening. But yet, by this weekend, I’m going to have over 200 (restaurants) open and almost all my hotels open,” Fertitta said, referring to Texas’ stay-at-home mandate being lifted. “Different people are in different situations, and what people don’t understand is I have more buckets than most.”
A report last month indicated that Fertitta has no interest in gaining additional liquidity by selling any portion of the Rockets and taking on minority stakeholders. The Rockets’ owner confirmed as much in his conversation with Amick, stressing that he’s also not entertaining the idea of selling the franchise outright.
“The Rockets would never be sold, unless the whole world came to an end and then it wouldn’t matter, OK?” Fertitta said. “If I ever sell the Rockets, it’s because we don’t exist anymore as a country with the rule of law. We’re having anarchy in the street, and at that point there’s no buyers.
“… I don’t need partners so I don’t have partners,” he added. “There’s just no interest in having partners. I think all owners would love not to have partners, but not all teams financially can do that. I have the opportunity that me and my family can own this team 100%, and there’s no reason to ever change that.”
Davide Scigliuzzo of Bloomberg reported last month that Fertitta’s companies had furloughed more than half of their employees. However, while his other businesses and their workers were impacted significantly by the coronavirus pandemic, Fertitta tells Amick that the Rockets haven’t had to lay off a single employee or force anyone to take a pay cut, even after Daryl Morey‘s tweet supporting Hong Kong protestors in the fall cost the franchise significant sponsorship money in China.
“The Rockets have no problem,” Fertitta said. “The Rockets are sitting on a huge revolver and a bunch of cash right now. And the Rockets are able to build up cash because nobody has to take it out to live on.”
NBA Remains Optimistic About 2019/20 Season Even With Further Delay
The overwhelming majority of high-level executives remain encouraged and optimistic that the NBA will resume this season, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.com.
Commissioner Adam Silver has maintained a strong relationship with the National Basketball Players Association as all parties aim to return to basketball. Still, there are many hurdles to overcome in order to resume the season.
Silver previously said that no decision will be made before May 1. That doesn’t mean the commissioner will be making any announcements on Friday, though there’s a bit of restlessness within the league to come to a decision sooner than later, Woj notes.
The MGM Grand in Las Vegas is one of several suitors pitching a plan to host the league. Vegas could potentially also host the WNBA by providing three adjacent hotels for teams to stay at. Disney World in Orlando, Florida remains an option that is gaining momentum. Another proposal would see games played in “pods” across different regions.
Having fans in the stands is probably out of the question. Having cameramen may not be needed either, as sources tell Wojnarowski that the teams could rely on robotic cameras with new, innovative angles of the contests.
TV analysts could potentially call games from remote locations. The current discussions have included keeping teams at a 30-to-35 person head count, including players.
There is some support for the 2020/21 season to begin in December and run through July or August, as a way of resuming the 2019/20 season without dramatically hindering the league’s ability to complete the full ’20/21 calendar. There’s also the understanding that the further the NBA pushes this season back, the higher the chances of having fans in the stands at some point.
The NBA is still sorting out scenarios, but Silver may have to push forward with a decision without the backing of everyone. One GM told Woj that “it’s hard to lead by consensus in a crisis.” Silver may have to simply act in what he feels are the best interests of all parties, even if there are some that have different preferences.
Testing for the coronavirus is another issue. Silver has insisted that he couldn’t allow for the NBA to utilize all the available tests and – according to Woj – has instituted a mandate stating that if a player wasn’t showing symptoms, he shouldn’t be tested. Woj reports that the league would have to reverse course on that and that it would take approximately 15,000 tests to complete the season. While the NBA can afford to pay a private company to make those tests, it would be problematic for the league if they’re not widely available to the American public.
It’s nearing two months since the league suspended its season and the urgency to come to a solution continues to rise.