The Entire NBA Should Congregate in One City to Finish Regular Season
The NBA should aim to resume their regular season in a few weeks and try to ensure that each team can finish out their full 82 game schedule (most teams have between 17–19 games remaining). Following national social distance and travel guidelines predicted to last through the Spring, all NBA teams should congregate in one city for the duration of the regular season and play games in small gyms with no spectators and only essential staff on hand. The players would live in quarantine between games, only exposing themselves to other people within the NBA. In this scenario, teams would not travel between games and could play every other day with occasional back to backs for the final few weeks of the season. With most workplaces in the United States closed indefinitely, the games could be played one after another throughout the day from morning until evening. The league could garner extremely high TV ratings globally during this period for several reasons. Firstly, the void left by the lack of other live content for sports fans and second, because the games would be played throughout the day, they would span throughout world time zones for streaming for an audience primarily confined to their homes.
A quick restart in the next few weeks using this “one city scenario” would face two significant obstacles. First, players and team staff would have to agree to isolate themselves from their families and friends for around 50 days. I believe that most players would voluntarily go for this plan because failing to complete the regular season may not only cost them money this year (they could lose as much as 10% of their salary this year because the league has only promised to pay them through April 1), but will likely also affect the NBA salary cap for next year. Besides the salary considerations, NBA players are uniquely accustomed to long road trips and time away from family.
The second and more challenging obstacle to a quick restart is the league would have to control the epidemic among its personnel in a very brief window of time. As of March 20, at least ten players and an unspecified amount of “league staffers” (which may include additional players) have tested positive for the virus. This list includes stars such as Kevin Durant of the Brooklyn Nets, Marcus Smart of the Boston Celtics, and Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz. With some of its best athletes infected, the league could proceed in one of two directions; 1) test everyone and wait until all players test negative to restart games, or 2) test everyone and restart the season with healthy players, while reintegrating the previously infected players as they test negative for Covid-19 and become immune to carry or spread the disease. For either scenario to work, the NBA would have to quarantine its staff between games and re-test regularly using a private company, which would likely result in criticism since an essential factor in the worldwide public health crisis remains the shortage of available testing resources. In a scenario where the league restarted with some of its employees still affected by Covid-19, NBA teams could use healthy G-Leaguers to fill out their rosters. The league may also be forced to consider restarting without staff (including coaches and referees) who are over 65 or have pre-existing conditions on-site at games.
While this all may seem like a lot of work and expense for an NBA restart, the league, public, and health officials should consider the league’s importance. Restarting the NBA could provide a huge morale boost for its hundreds of millions of fans worldwide, and more importantly, could also encourage millions of people to stay indoors, which could provide a huge benefit to public health worldwide.
Here is a hypothetical scenario of how an NBA restart could go down:
The league picks a location with adequate facilities to safely quarantine and provide catering to players and staff for several weeks. Next, the NBA picks a rotation of three nearby small arenas or gyms in the same city (two to play games, and one as an alternate if one of the gyms becomes contaminated with Covid-19. Lastly, after immediate testing, the league strictly quarantines its staff for the next month. The restart begins on Wednesday, April 22, and the league plays 8–10 games in two gyms every day to complete its regular-season docket in early June. The playoffs should begin in the second week of June when many of the social distance restrictions begin to be lifted, opening the possibly having playoff games in teams’ home cities. This schedule could also leave an outside chance that some NBA players (excluding those whose teams go deep in the playoffs) could be ready for the 2020 Olympics if the Tokyo games take place as scheduled in August 2020
