The NBA’s 2020-21 season is just three weeks away, and teams are gearing up for what’s sure to be a unique campaign due to COVID-19.
Doc Rivers, however, is worried about the season’s viability.
“I’m very concerned if we can pull this off,” the 76ers head coach told reporters Tuesday, per ESPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth.
Why is he so worried, you ask?
The NBA is forgoing the bubble environment concept it’d employed to complete the 2019-20 season for the time being. But COVID-19, hasn’t discriminated against the sports world.
The NFL, for instance, has coped with numerous outbreaks of various sizes since beginning the 2020 season without a bubble and rescheduled several games as a result. The Baltimore Ravens are the latest team to feel the virus’ effects, with 20 players going on the team’s reserve/COVID-19 list in just one week. This forced the league to reschedule their Week 12 game against the Pittsburgh Steelers not once, not twice but three times.
Rivers doesn’t think a model like this will work in the NBA.
“The difference in football is they play once a week and have 1,000 players so when you miss three or four players, you can still get away with it,” Rivers added, via Hubbarth. “If we missed three or four players, we’re in trouble, especially with the amount of games we’re playing three or four days a week.
“So if one of our guys and two of our key guys gets the virus and they miss 10 days to 14 days that can be eight games and that can knock you out of the playoffs,” he added. “So that’s a concern. Our guys’ health is a concern.”
Rivers’ concerns are entirely warranted, too.
Shortly after the NBA temporarily shut down, more than a dozen players and staff tested positive for COVID-19. Among those infected were some of the league’s biggest names, including Donovan Mitchell and Christian Wood, though multiple other players that tested positive went unnamed. More big names like Nikola Jokic, Malcolm Brodgon, Buddy Hield and Russell Westbrook returned positive tests over the summer.
The positive tests suddenly stopped flowing in when — you guessed it — the league had teams enter the Walt Disney World bubble in early July. In fact, no one tested positive for the virus after entering the environment.
Had the NBA played through the pandemic, many teams likely would have found themselves with gaping holes on their rosters (not to mention the additional spread it probably would have caused). There’s a good chance this could happen this upcoming season without placing teams in a controlled environment. And even with little to no fans in attendance at games, the risk for community spread will be far greater this time around than it was when everyone was hunkered down in one spot.
We’ll see how things go, though, when the league kicks off its season Dec. 22.
