NBA coronavirus return: How the league might structure its season & playoffs

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2020/04/nba-coronavirus-return-how-the-league-might-structure-its-season-playoffs-john-karalis.html



NBA coronavirus return: How the league might structure its season & playoffs | John Karalis




Today 1:30 PM




(Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images).Getty Images



By John Karalis | JKaralis@masslive.com




We’re starting to see the framework of what the return of NBA basketball might look like. Obviously, there’s no guarantee that it will, but the league’s ongoing efforts to piece together some kind of ending to its 2019-20 season mean that it might.

If we assume that it does, the next question is… how?

Over the weekend, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported the league has a 25 day plan for players to return, which includes 11 days of individual workout time and two weeks of a training camp.


Last week, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported the league would like to be finished by Labor Day weekend so as not to directly compete with the return of football (assuming football starts on time).

With those parameters in place, we now have a time frame of sorts. Whenever basketball comes back, players will have 25 days to prepare to face an opponent, and the goal is to crown a champion in early-to-mid September. Let’s see how much hoops we can stuff into this bag.

Let’s start with an almost unrealistically optimistic timeline because a best-case scenario is already going to be hard to pull off.

We’re in the midst of the worst of this pandemic, so there’s no way players will be able to train any time soon. Some numbers are starting to plateau, but we’re not in a recovery phase yet. But let’s assume (there are a lot of assumptions being made here because it’s all we have) there’s a way to start clearing players for those 11 days of individual workouts by June 1. Let’s say for the sake of this exercise that somehow, public health and all the common sense precautions and necessary steps can be taken.


June 1 is a nice, clean start time. There might be no chance it happens, but again, by starting this on the most optimistic timeline, you’ll see how quickly challenges can arise. A June 1 start gives the NBA 14 weeks to restart the season and crown a champion.

Let’s also assume the Las Vegas plan is in place. It’s a central location with two courts that gives the NBA the option of double-barreled basketball action or alternating games while allowing for full pregame warmups so the league can have a full day of games that basically start once the previous game ends.

The 25 day plan means teams would travel to Las Vegas on June 26. A two-day rest period means basketball can return, in some form, on June 29. We’ve used four weeks to prepare for this. There are 10 weeks left.

The NBA has blocked out April 18 to June 21, nine weeks, for the completion of the playoffs. The league probably can’t just jump right into the playoffs, though, without risking player health. There are three stages of getting guys ready for playoff basketball and, at this point of this exercise, they will have only completed two.


The individual workouts are the first. Guys are sitting around right now so they’ll need time to ramp up to some full court work. The two weeks of training camp are the second step, and will get them back into decent shape, but game-speed basketball can’t be replicated during practice court scrimmages. These guys will need some kind of games against other teams to get fully up to game speed.

Will those be regular season games? Will the NBA set up an exhibition game or two for these guys to get acclimated? Those are questions that will have to be answered, but either way, the league may need a couple of weeks to get some regular season games played.

How many games can be played in a day?

Each game takes up a two and a half hour window. If Boston Celtics vs. Milwaukee Bucks is happening on the Thomas & Mack floor at UNLV, Toronto Raptors vs. Indiana Pacers can be warming up in the Cox Pavilion. If the first game starts at noon, games can be played at 2:30, 5, 7:30, and 10 PM. When one game clears the court, the next team can begin its warmups


This is an aggressive scheduling that puts challenges on things like treatment by trainers, and is about as aggressive as the NBA can get. Five games per day means 10 teams can play in a day. If the NBA staggers it, they can get each team to play every other day to work in some of the remaining regular season games.

So let’s say Boston starts on June 29. They can play on July 1, 3, 6, and 8 to get five games in. That could mean two exhibition games and three regular season games to help break ties and establish seeding. It could be five regular season games. However the league wants to do it, they can put a truncated regular season together if they want.

Note, this is a 20-team plan. It would mean the bottom five teams in each conference are done for the year. This will be controversial because instead of Boston having New York, Washington Detroit, and Chicago in their remaining schedule, they could face nothing but playoff teams or teams fighting for a spot. The league will need to do something to make sure players are ready and seeding/tiebreakers can be hammered out, but there’s just no time to waste on a Pistons-Knicks game.


This plan brings us to mid-July. The 11th or 12th would give the NBA about eight or nine weeks to have a playoffs. Because they’re in a central location, they can cut down on the travel days that extend a normal schedule. They’d still need to make an adjustment, possibly by making the first or first two rounds best-of-five series.

Starting on July 12, the NBA could play four games a day instead of five, giving all 16 playoff teams a chance to play a five game series. That brings us to July 21 and eight teams left. Teams would likely get two or three days off to rest and prepare for the next series.

The second round of the playoffs could start on July 24. A best-of-five will end on August 2, giving the league time to fit in two best-of-seven series, the Conference Finals and NBA Finals, by Labor Day weekend by following the same schedule of two days off between series to rest and prepare and then playing every other day.

It’s hard to say how the league is planning its return, but it’s pretty obvious it comes with challenges. This plan fits the reported timeline and it involved (a) an almost unrealistically optimistic start date, (b) eliminating 10 teams from the regular season equation, and (c) cutting two playoff series down to best-of-five.


If the league starts its plan later than June 1, then other considerations have to be made. The league could cut the playoff field down to six teams, or maybe four. It could just play a couple of exhibition games and jump right into the playoffs. Every series could become a best-of-five, or some might become a best-of-three.

Each day the NBA gets further away from the optimistic plan I laid out, the more drastic the adjustment will have to be. There’s still time to pull off a return and to crown a champion in September, but that time is quickly running out.



bob


.

So,

LeBron James rejects reported efforts to cancel NBA season amid coronavirus crisis

https://sports.yahoo.com/lebron-james-rejects-reported-efforts-to-cancel-nba-season-amid-coronavirus-crisis-175431363.html

and

Report: NBA tells teams to stop arranging coronavirus tests for asymptomatic players

https://sports.yahoo.com/report-nba-tells-teams-to-stop-arranging-coronavirus-tests-for-asymptomatic-players-141205662.html

They cannot stop testing all NBA personnel (players and staff) and still start up the season. I understand the reason why they want to stop testing, it's all about perception.

And then this:

Report: NBA expects to need about 15,000 coronavirus tests to restart season amid pandemic

https://sports.yahoo.com/nba-expects-to-need-15000-coronavirus-tests-to-restart-season-amid-pandemic-033746053.html

dboss wrote:Just read where the NBA is postponing both the draft lottery and the combine.

Seems to me the lottery should be held.  All on line.

The combine is a different story.

Covid 19 is a pain in the ass.  

Dboss,

Yeah, they postponed them "indefinitely".

Needless to say that completely screws up lottery teams since they can't be sure where they are picking. Also, without the Combine, there are no standard tests that can be used to compare players. A complete mess.


bob


.

So all these players and personnel have to be tested. Wait for the outpouring of screams and yells from people who view athletes as "privileged prima donnas" Right after this all broke, and the Celtics returned home, facebook was loaded with people wanting to know how these guys who had no symptons were tested and all those people waiting in line could not. Hospitals were reporting such a shortage, yet these players got tested. I am not saying this was wrong, as they were exposed to a team with players who tested positive twice in over a week. I believe they needed to be tested, but 15 thousand tests????? I have to wonder what will happen

This is just all for money, there is no doubt. I heard Jaylen Brown who is from Georgia, saying that he was very uneasy about that state going back to "normal". How do the players feel about this? After all, Boston is a hot bed still. MGH still has over 300 patients and that is just one hospital

This is going to be a terrible undertaking