Is the NBA sure it should really return this summer?

With the NBA set to return next month, is resuming the season actually the right decision? Can it be done safely?

On April 17, a month after the NBA postponed its season following a positive coronavirus test for the Utah Jazz’s Rudy Gobert, commissioner Adam Silver spoke about how important safety was for the league and said that the league’s return would be determined by “the data and not the date.”

However, now, two months later, with the season set to return on July 31, it seems as if that previous statement has been walked back if not ignored outright. For weeks now, July 31 has become an almost sacrosanct date, the latest that the league could reasonably resume the previously postponed 2019-20 campaign and still have a somewhat normal 2020-21 season. But buried in the excitement of whether or not the NBA can feasibly return and crown a 2020 champion is the question of whether it actually should, and whether the NBA is going against Silver’s initial claim by clinging to a date instead of the data.

In the lead-up to this plan, the NBA was initially much more forthright in its talking about potential formats for the season’s abbreviated end than the safety procedures necessary to ensure that this whole thing does not go quickly and horribly awry. Lest it be forgotten, there remains no cure, no vaccine, no reliable treatment for the coronavirus. And with it being a new disease, none of us has any idea what the long-term ramifications of contracting it may be. These statements are so obvious that I feel almost silly and redundant mentioning them, but these fundamental points get lost in the eagerness to have life return to some semblance of normalcy and for the NBA to return.

What’s it stake in the NBA’s push to resume the 2019-20 season?

In spite of whatever precautions the NBA wishes to take — and we still don’t have a crystal-clear idea of what exactly those are — it appears to those of us on the outside that all the league can do is hope for the best, which is not an ideal strategy when there are literal lives at stake. Perhaps the NBA has taken more steps to ensure safety than have been revealed to reporters, making the resorts and arenas much more secure than it appears they will at this moment, but if there were ever a time for full transparency from the league, it’s now.

It is true that the chance of the players themselves dying from the disease is relatively rare. They are all young, but with many who have contracted it attesting to still having symptoms weeks or months after their original diagnosis, the question of whether getting the virus could shorten or even end an otherwise healthy player’s career may not be a theoretical one. The NBA has recognized this by taking out an insurance policy that would “cover career-ending injuries related to COVID-19 or conventional basketball injuries… for several million dollars,” per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. One can only imagine how much a policy like that must cost and from that imagining, easily infer just how much more the NBA believes they stand to lose by not resuming the season. It’s a bleak calculus.

Also, while the league is saying they will institute an isolated bubble, every new bit of information about the logistics of that “bubble” only serves to make it sound either more porous or more inhumane. While the setup at Walt Disney Resort and the bevy of amenities that will be there is likely to appeal to one’s own inner teenager, the isolating elements of it appear more dystopian and bleak the longer one dwells upon them. And there is no way to ensure that no players or staff members break the quarantine without instituting draconian measures that would make most fans uneasy, to say nothing of the discomfort the players involved would feel. It is easy to sympathize with anyone unhappy with these conditions since it is fundamentally unfair to expect players to sequester themselves from their families and loved ones for the sake of our entertainment, but that it is what is now being demanded.

There are also a number of more granular questions that need to be asked, such as: What sort of liability is the league taking on in case of an outbreak? What, if anything, would cause the league to shut things down? What if there are players or staff members who do not feel comfortable coming to Orlando? Will their contracts still be honored? How will the league be able to ensure everyone will be able to enter Orlando safely when 132 of the city’s airport workers have tested positive over the last few months? What about Disney staff, who will be going home to vulnerable people who are at much greater risk of dying if they contract the virus than the players themselves? The league has certainly thought about these things, though they’ve kept the answers to such questions close to the chest, leaving fans to merely trust in the plan even though fuller information is not available to them.

I understand the urgency to resume the season on all sides. Fans want to watch the games and be entertained; players on contenders are hoping to win a title and define or further their legacy, to say nothing of their own financial incentives to finish out the season. Failing to do so would open up a whole number of questions regarding the CBA, television deals, salary cap and players’ contracts that no one is eager to deal with. Yet dealing with difficult problems such as that strikes me as preferable than potentially having to handle the ones that could potentially arise in Orlando over the course of the coming months. If the literal future of the league is indeed at stake, then it makes the NBA’s insistence on resuming plan in spite of all these issues more understandable, if not necessarily defensible.

We all need beauty to survive. Whether it takes the form of a walk in a lovely park, sitting and watching a sunset with a combination of colors that feels unprecedented, reading a book, watching a movie or spending time laughing with friends, such small moments sustain us and are the things that make life worth living. For many of us, the NBA is one of those things. Few things bring me more joy or strike me as lovelier than the release of Stephen Curry’s jump shot, LeBron James making a pass that did not appear possible until after the fact, or Zion Williamson converting a haphazard pass into a domineering dunk. The thing is, we don’t need this particular form of beauty right now. Sports may be such a large part of our lives that their presence simply seems natural, an unexamined necessity, but this pandemic has highlighted both what it is they provide for us so ably and also what a luxury they are.

I want the NBA back. I want to see the LA Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers potentially match up in the postseason; I want to see Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks try to redeem themselves after their conference finals loss last season; I want to see the Toronto Raptors try to defend their title and the young Memphis Grizzlies or New Orleans Pelicans squads play at least a few more games; I want to see the games and moments and matchups that are too unlikely for me to anticipate happening now. But more than that, I want it to be done right and for the players to be safe. At this moment, no such thing can be promised.

If the NBA is truly prioritizing the data rather than the date, then there is no reason for the league to resume now. Not enough progress has been made in halting the spread of the virus for there to be a compelling argument that now is a good time to resume play. The league must be able to show why resuming play in July is safer than it would have been to do so previously, and they have not done that. Merely wishing that the virus has vanished does not make its disappearance actual. On that April 17 conference call, Silver stated, “We have to accept that we’re operating with incomplete facts here … there is an enormous amount about the virus that is yet to be learned.” Those facts are still not close enough to complete for the league to resume play, and yet the season will still continue in less than a month and a half. As it turns out, it may have always been about the date.