Even if the NBA returns to conclude the 2019-20 season, it won’t look the same

Will COVID-19 result in the NBA’s first lost season? Even if it does return, though, it won’t look the same for fans or the players.

The world is scared. Americans were some of the last to catch on, but we’re there, at last. Sports, as we all know them, are changing before our eyes. The question is: when will we return some sort of new normal?

Prior to the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder game that wasn’t, 29 of the league’s owners conceded that to reduce health concerns, games could be played without fans. Shortly after The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported that Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that the league was suspended for 30 days – a number that could end up being extended, if necessary.

On Brian Windhost’s Hoop Collective, only Kirk Goldsberry would say he thinks games could resume before mid-April. Some experienced writers, such as Bill Simmons, think this may be a lost season. My favorite NBA podcasting duo, Ben Golliver and Andrew Sharp, of the Greatest of All Talk have gone back and forth between takes in the days since the outbreak.

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If the currently known infected players, and those currently unknown, are able to recover before long and are deemed no longer contagious, the season could theoretically resume. Fan attendance likely will not (unless something drastically changes over the next few weeks).

Nearly every state and many cities have banned or strongly warned against large gatherings. If the risk of infection – even in empty gyms – is still deemed high in the summer, this season will truly be lost.

It is nice to think that even if the regular season could be over, we could easily begin the playoffs as soon as possible, especially since eight teams in the East and eight in the West have all put distance between themselves and the lottery-bound teams (a minimum of 3.5 games behind them in the West, and 5.5 in the East.)

But, as Rick Bucher’s recent article details too much money is at stake to forgo the rest of the regular season entirely. It’s sounding more and more like some regular-season games will be played, and then the playoffs, or neither.

Perhaps owners, players, and the NBA will compromise with a mildly shortened season where teams play 72-80 games. In that peachy scenario, the probable last chance to resume games would likely be mid-May, so playoffs could begin in early-June, and conclude by early-August, as Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban speculated.

If players aren’t cleared to resume play until closer to the planned start of the 2020-21 NBA season, however, this season is all but lost.

The NBA season is far more important to most superstars than the Olympics, so, despite Japan’s Prime Minister’s assertion that the Olympics will continue as planned, the choice for stars between making a deep playoff run, and playing for their home countries, is a non-starter.

Even if the season is back on, fans likely won’t be a part of the rest of the regular season and not any of the playoffs. But too much money is at stake to declare this season lost, so if the players initially infected recover well, precautions are taken, and a majority of players feel safe, games will be played in empty gyms.

Hopefully, we’ll have a 2020 NBA champion. But the clock is ticking.