Players Need Month To Prepare For Action?
Providing teams and players with two weeks notice won’t be nearly enough to resume the season, ESPN’s Baxter Holmes reports.
Many team officials believe players will need at least a month to get ready for action after such a long layoff. A shorter period of training, workouts and practice could lead to a host of injuries, according to athletic training staff members and executives interviewed by Holmes.
The time required for player to get their bodies into “basketball shape” is one of the major hurdles the league must clear in order to finish the 2019-20 season.
Training facilities around the league have been closed for several weeks. Teams have provided players with workout programs and equipment but some of them don’t even have access to a basket.
With financial losses piling up during the suspension of play, there could be a greater sense of urgency to get teams back on the court. That could limit the gap between preparations and games.
If the league decides to cancel the remainder of the regular season and go straight to the playoffs, the players’ bodies would need an even longer time to adjust.
“I need these guys pushing their bodies for at least 30 days prior to the first meaningful basketball game,” an unnamed GM told Holmes. “And by meaningful basketball game, I mean a postseason game.”
The league, the Players’ Association and health officials would have to agree on a timeline that serves all parties, Holmes adds.
Coronavirus Notes: Resumption Plans, Financial Impact, More
Within an in-depth feature about how the Jazz dealt with the ramifications of Rudy Gobert‘s positive coronavirus test last month, Shams Charania, Sam Amick, and Tony Jones of The Athletic cite sources who say one preliminary plan the NBA has discussed for a resumed 2019/20 season would involve a two-week quarantine period in which teams could use facilities and players could work out individually.
That period would be followed by a two-week training camp and an abbreviated regular season and postseason, per Charania, Amick, and Jones. All games would take place in a single “bubble” city and without fans in attendance.
The league has also explored the possibility of a play-in tournament for the seventh and eighth seeds, sources tell The Athletic. However, both that idea and any sort of return timeline remain hypothetical at this point, since the NBA still has no sense of if or when resuming the season will be possible.
Here’s more on the coronavirus situation and the NBA’s hiatus:
- In a memo to players and agents this week, the NBPA said there’s no “drop-dead date” for any final determination on the 2019/20 season, according to Marc Berman of The New York Post. There have been whispers that the NBA doesn’t want this year’s playoffs running any later than Labor Day.
- For those interested in how a postponed and/or canceled season will impact players financially, Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report and Tim Bontemps and Brian Windhorst of ESPN have provided good breakdowns of the situation and what might come next. As we detailed on Thursday, players are still receiving their full pay checks for now, but will likely eventually have to forfeit – or even give back – a portion of their salaries.
- Even when the NBA and other sports leagues eventually reopen their events to fans, the coronavirus pandemic will have changed the way we attend games, writes Kelly Cohen of ESPN. As Cohen detailed in a separate ESPN article, a poll released this week by Seton Hall’s School of Business suggested that 72% of respondents – including 61% who self-identified as sports fans – aren’t planning to attend a sporting event until a COVID-19 vaccine has been introduced.
NBA Teams Want To Delay Draft Until At Least August 1
A number of NBA teams are united in their hopes of convincing the league to delay its June 25 draft until at least August 1, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski and Jonathan Givony of ESPN.
As Wojnarowski and Givony explain, top team executives around the NBA want to postpone the draft since it would increase the possibility of salvaging certain aspects of the pre-draft process, including in-person workouts, interviews, and medical evaluations. The coronavirus pandemic makes those in-person meetings impossible for the time being.
The NBA recently sent out guidelines to its teams for the pre-draft process, prohibiting clubs from watching live video workouts or from conducting more than four total hours of virtual meetings – including up to two in a single week – with a single prospect.
Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports notes (via Twitter) that teams also aren’t permitted to request or watch any videos of player workouts that took place after April 6. Essentially, teams are limited to studying film of games and practices that occurred before the NBA and NCAA shut down play last month.
While delaying the draft is certainly an idea the NBA has discussed, commissioner Adam Silver has said the league won’t make any major decisions on its calendar until at least May 1, and the NBA is sticking to that timeline for now, as Woj and Givony report.
Wojnarowski and Givony also point out that a tentative draft-date change from June 25 to August 1 could give the NBA additional flexibility as it gets more clarity in the coming months. If the remainder of the 2019/20 season is canceled, the draft could continue as planned on August 1. If the league is able to resume play, the event could be pushed back further, perhaps even to September.
Essentially, teams don’t want a situation where the draft takes place before the 2019/20 season is officially over, since it would prevent clubs from making any trades that involve players. Team officials around the league believe the draft and free agency should “stay connected,” taking place after the season formally ends, per ESPN’s report.
As for the impact that a postponed draft might have on the NCAA, Jeremy Woo of SI.com writes that college programs are already facing a series of new challenges during this year’s recruiting period due to the coronavirus pandemic. Pushing back the draft would only exacerbate the roster-building process for college coaches.
Givony acknowledges in a pair of tweets that a draft delay would complicate things for college coaches — especially those whose underclassmen are testing the draft waters. However, Givony adds that he has spoken to several prospects who like the idea of a postponement, particularly if it increases the chances of restoring part of the pre-draft process and ensuring there’s some form of Summer League.
NBA, NBPA Extend Transaction Moratorium Indefinitely
The NBA’s freeze on transactions, which has now been active for nearly a month due to the coronavirus pandemic, will continue for the foreseeable future, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, who reports (via Twitter) that the league and the players’ union have agreed to extend the moratorium indefinitely.
The moratorium prevents NBA teams from making any sort of roster move, including signings, trades, and the exercising of player or team options.
The league’s regular season had originally been scheduled to end on April 15, which also would have been the last day for teams to sign free agents to their 2019/20 rosters or promote two-way players. For example, April 15 would have been the last day for the Thunder to sign two-way player Luguentz Dort to a standard contract to make him playoff-eligible.
If the NBA is able to resume its ’19/20 season, there will almost certainly be a window when those transactions will be permitted again so that teams can prepare their rosters for an abridged postseason. It’s not clear how the league would handle that lost window if the season is canceled.
The NBA and the NBPA also figure to negotiate a new timeline for the player and team option decision deadlines and salary guarantee dates that will be delayed by the current moratorium and the indefinite suspension of the season. Depending on how the coming months play out, more significant dates like the draft and the start of the free agent period could also be pushed back.
Rift Still Exists Between Jazz Stars Mitchell, Gobert
In the wake of his positive test for COVID-19 last month, Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell was said to be frustrated with teammate Rudy Gobert. The All-Star center, who had tested positive for the coronavirus a day earlier, had reportedly shown a cavalier attitude toward teammates and their belongings in the locker room before finding out he was affected by COVID-19.
While both of Utah’s stars have now been cleared of the coronavirus for approximately two weeks, sources tell Shams Charania, Sam Amick, and Tony Jones of The Athletic that the Mitchell/Gobert relationship remains tense.
According to The Athletic’s report, the Jazz have begun to work on repairing that relationship, but Mitchell has been reluctant to mend fences, with one source with knowledge of the situation going so far as to say that the relationship “doesn’t appear salvageable.”
The Jazz remain hopeful that things will improve over time, a stance that teammate Joe Ingles also took when he recently spoke to The Athletic.
“I’m confident our team is going to be totally fine,” Ingles said. “I heard Donovan’s response (on Good Morning America), or whatever it was, to that question, and a part of that is on Donovan and Rudy to sort out if he’s frustrated with him or whatever. But I have no doubt when we go back to training, or when our season starts again, our team is going to be what we have been and what we are. … I’m confident our team will be completely fine. The chemistry will be fine.”
According to Charania, Amick, and Jones, the Jazz have attempted to impart to Mitchell that there’s no way of knowing whether he contracted the virus from Gobert or vice versa — or whether the two players got it from separate sources.
However, The Athletic’s report notes that Utah management and the club’s coaching staff were ahead of the curve in educating Jazz players about the virus, discussing it for the first time in a team meeting on February 25, several days before the NBA sent out its first league-wide memo about the subject. As such, it makes sense that Mitchell would be frustrated by Gobert continuing to downplay the issue on March 9, the day the big man jokingly touched several reporters’ microphones during a media session.
As The Athletic’s reporters point out, with no end to the NBA’s hiatus in sight, there should still be plenty of time for Mitchell and Gobert to sort things out before they take the court together.
Hiatus Notes: Staying In Shape, Force Majeure, More
If the NBA does attempt to resume its 2019/20 season this summer, the amount of time players will get to get game-ready could be a key point of contention, especially since they’ll have to adjust to the intensity of the postseason almost immediately upon resumption.
During a recent appearance on the Wizards’ Off The Bench podcast, Dr. Daniel Medina, the Wizards‘ chief of athletic care and performance, addressed that issue. As Medina explained, it’s a challenge to keep players in peak physical condition when a potential return date has yet to be set. However, he acknowledged that they’re dealing with “young, healthy athletes,” and expressed optimism that they may only need a couple weeks to prepare.
“As every basketball fan knows, the biggest challenge, at this point when you stop, is tendon issues and chronic joint issues,” Medina said. “In that sense, the program that we have put together, and a lot of credit to our PTs, let’s have our guys not lose much muscle, have those tendons ready to be uploaded and if we’re given two or three weeks to ramp up, we’ll be ready to do it.”
Here’s more on the NBA’s hiatus and the issues that come along with it:
- Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report posits that reducing the number of teams required to resume the season from 30 to 16 – essentially just the playoff clubs – would give the NBA a more realistic chance to complete the 2019/20 campaign in a single city.
- If the NBA triggers the force majeure clause in the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement and requires players to give back a portion of their salaries, that won’t apply to waived players with guaranteed contracts or players on two-way deals. According to Stefan Bondy of The New York Daily News (Twitter link), the NBPA clarified that point to agents in a conference call this week.
- David Aldridge of The Athletic takes an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look back at the night of March 11 in Oklahoma City, when the NBA had to make a quick decision not just to postpone the Jazz/Thunder game that was about to tip off, but also to suspend the entire season.
NBA Players To Receive Full April 15 Pay Checks
NBA teams will send full pay checks to players on the league’s next payment date, April 15, according to reports from Shams Charania of The Athletic and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter links).
The league had previously proposed to the National Basketball Players Association that players accept a 50% pay check reduction beginning on April 15 due to the suspension of the season, with the NBPA counter-proposing that players take a 25% reduction beginning in mid-May. Today’s news doesn’t mean the union’s proposal won out, but – as Wojnarowski tweets – it does suggest that May 1 will be the next payment date to watch as negotiations between the two sides continue.
The NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement calls for approximately a 50/50 revenue split between the teams and players. For now, team owners are bearing the brunt of the NBA’s lost revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic, but that dynamic will have to shift at some point.
As cap guru Albert Nahmad and others have explained, in the event that regular-season and/or playoff games are canceled, the “force majeure” clause in the CBA would allow the NBA to recoup a portion of players’ salaries — approximately 1% per canceled game. However, as long as the remainder of the 2019/20 season is considered to be “postponed” rather than canceled, the league has little leverage to withhold players’ pay for the time being.
If they continue to receive their pay checks in full, players will likely put themselves in a position where they have to return some of that money to the NBA down the road – if and when games are canceled – to balance the revenue split. That’s especially true for players who only receive their annual salaries in 12 installments through May 1 instead of 24 installments through November 1, since those players have nearly been paid in full already for 2019/20.
Not all players will necessarily have to return money to the NBA in the coming weeks or months, even if games are canceled. Jabari Young of CNBC, who wrote earlier in the week about this issue, suggested that for players whose deals run beyond the current season, team owners may instead recoup a portion of their salaries over the length of those contracts.
NBA, ESPN Announce Details Of H-O-R-S-E Competition
As expected, Thunder guard Chris Paul, Hawks guard Trae Young, and Bulls guard Zach LaVine are among the players who will participate in the H-O-R-S-E competition being organized by the NBA, NBPA, and ESPN, per a press release.
According to the announcement, Jazz guard Mike Conley, former NBA stars Chauncey Billups and Paul Pierce, newly-elected Hall-of-Famer Tamika Catchings, and three-time WNBA All-Star Allie Quigley will fill out the eight-person field for the event.
The four quarterfinal matchups will air on Sunday evening (April 12), with Young facing Billups and Catchings facing Conley in group one, while LaVine goes up against Pierce and Paul squares off against Quigley in group two. The group one winners will face one another in the first semifinal next Thursday (April 16), with the group two winners competing in the second semifinal. The final will take place on the same night.
A coin toss will determine which player starts each matchup. Each player will be required to describe his or her shot attempt beforehand and dunking won’t be permitted. ESPN’s Mark Jones will serve as the event’s host, with each player attempting shots from his or her own home gym.
The event will raise more than $200K in support of coronavirus relief efforts.
NBA, Players Assessing Blood Tests For Coronavirus
The NBA and the Players’ Association are looking into quick blood tests for the novel coronavirus which would make it more viable for the league to resume the season, Baxter Holmes of ESPN reports.
The league and its players have been assessing the viability of multiple blood-testing devices that could provide accurate results within a matter of minutes. That process would be a critical first step toward returning to action, though commissioner Adam Silver said on Monday that no decision on resuming play would be made until at least next month.
The “diabetes-like” blood test can be conducted with the prick of a finger and yield results within 15 minutes. Illinois-based Abbott Laboratories have begun shipping out the rapid-response tests, which can deliver results in 5-13 minutes. However, they have yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Sources told Holmes that the assessment of utilizing these tests is still in the exploratory phase. Finding ways to rapidly test for COVID-19 is the crucial path for sports leagues to resume play in the coming weeks and months, Holmes adds.
However, the NBA and its players are also aware that even if such rapid testing devices become available, health care workers and others tasked with saving lives should have priority to them.
Silver: Weeks Away From Decision On Resuming Season
Commissioner Adam Silver said in an interview with TNT broadcaster Ernie Johnson on Monday that a decision on whether to resume the season won’t come until at least May 1, Tim Bontemps of ESPN relays in a string of tweets.
Like millions of fans and everyone connected with the league, Silver said the suspension of play in NBA and other major pro and college sports has left a void in daily life.
“I think we are all realizing how much we miss live sports,” he said.
However, the stark reality of the coronavirus pandemic has made it impossible to know when games will be played again. Playing regular-season games as well as a postseason is still a possibility “in an ideal world.” However, there has been a growing sense of pessimism as the delay drags on with no end in sight.
Even though the league is willing to stretch this season into September to crown a championship, it also has to take into consideration that it doesn’t want negatively impact next season, Silver points out.
Silver is even more concerned about the 55,000 jobs affected by the stoppage of play in the league, including all of its game-day workers. Once it’s considered safe for games to be played, the sports leagues will be “ready to go.”