It sure sounds like the NBA is operating under the impression that the current season will not be resuming.
The NBA, as well as most every other sports league in the world, is paused amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s unclear not only when things will return back to normal in the world, but also when it even would be possible to play professional sports again.
And according to a report from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, the NBA doesn’t sound too optimistic about the 2019-20 campaign finishing up.
More Coronavirus: President Trump Believes 2020 NFL Season Should Start On Time
“The talks between the players union and the league this week, I’ve talked to both sides of this issue, and it is clear that the NBA is angling to set up a deal that enables them to shut the season down,” Windhorst said, via CBS Sports. “Now they don’t have to do that yet, and the way they’re negotiating they’re leaving themselves an option either way, but they’re not having talks about how to restart the league, they’re having financial talks about what would happen if the season shuts down, and I think there is a significant amount of pessimism right now. …
“There comes a point where you go too far and start looking at damaging two seasons, and that is what the NBA is trying to evaluate,” Windhorst added. “They do have runway here, I do think that if they had to go into August or September to finish this season, but I’m not sure they feel confident about that right now, and a big factor is testing. We just don’t have the testing. At some point not only does there have to be a test that’s quick and can evaluate whether or not a player is healthy enough to enter a game, but you have to know whether you have the tests available so you’re not taking them away from people who need them, and so right now, that’s not here. If in six or eight weeks, if it is here, we can have a different conversation, but the league is preparing for that answer to be no.”
Of course, sports take a back seat to everything else going on in the world at the moment. And it seems Adam Silver and Co. likely will continue to operate that way for the foreseeable future.
