The NBA is still on hold, and there is no precise information about what will happen in the future with the best basketball league in the world.
Since March, and the moment when all stopped, many things happened, but neither of them gave some hints about the league’s next steps. Recently we saw that the draft lottery and the combine were postponed, and the same seems inevitable for the NBA draft. According to World Sports Network, the season was almost lost at a certain point, when the majority of executives believed that there wouldn’t be conditions for it to end properly.
However, it is different now, and there is a reasonable optimism among all the key figures within the NBA when it comes to finishing the campaign.
Commissioner Adam Silver stated that the league has several possible scenarios on how to handle the situation, and each one of them is conditioned with different factors. Yet, those factors are not in the NBA’s reach, and the league can’t do anything about it but to wait.
Almost all scenarios include the ending of the season. There are, of course, different ways for doing so, and this is the most intriguing topic for discussion among the NBA fans.
What determines which plan would be used is time. The main problem for Commissioner Silver and the task force around him is the period between now and the moment of termination of the pandemics.
Why is that?
The NBA needs to take care of multiple things. One of them is the start of the next season. Some would say that there isn’t a problem with it because the 2020/21 season could be extended a little bit, and everything would go back to normal.
Now that would be a good idea if it weren’t for the Olympic Games, that are scheduled for the 2021 summer. Many players from the league are going to Tokyo as members of their respective national teams. They need to have time to prepare for the challenges, without endangering their health, which is why the NBA has to adjust the calendar to the Olympics also.
If the pandemic lasts too long, there are proposals to end the season with a tournament similar to the one applied in the NCAA. One-game elimination and that is it. The Finals would be played in the best-of-five series according to some; others are leaving that as an open question.
Meanwhile, the regular part of the campaign will apparently take place in several spots in the USA. The plan is to localize the teams, and to exclude all the traveling, thus decreasing the risks of infection. According to some executives, it would be easier to apply safety measures and protect the players’ health with all of them in one place.
Orlando and Las Vegas were mentioned as the possible venues, as they have all the needed resources for this to organize.
The entire situation is still confusing, but it isn’t as helpless as before. In certain states, the authorities are relaxing the measures imposed because of the pandemic, and the players are able to go back to training once again. That is a good sign and an indication that the light at the end of the tunnel is visible.