The NBA is getting ready to finally resume its season on Thursday inside the bubble it created in Orlando, and it may be the blueprint for the 2020-21 season, too.
National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts said in a phone interview with ESPN that if things stand the way they are, a bubble may be necessary to complete next season as well.
“If tomorrow looks like today, I don’t know how we say we can do it differently,” Roberts said. “If tomorrow looks like today, and today we all acknowledge – and this is not Michele talking, this is the league, together with the [players’ association] and our respective experts saying, ‘This is the way to do it’ – then that’s going to have to be the way to do it.”
The NBA wrapped up its final scrimmage games on Tuesday evening and reported that there have not been any positive COVID-19 tests in the last three weeks inside the bubble.
The lone incident came from Clippers guard Lou Williams, who left the bubble to visit a strip club in Atlanta. The league is requiring he quarantine for 10 days.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball spent Tuesday doing damage control after 17 members of the Miami Marlins organization had tested positive for COVID-19 within the last week. While MLB says they are the only club to register any positive tests since Friday, it has impacted the scheduling of games and raised concerns about the feasibility of the remainder of the season.
On Monday, the NHL – which is resuming its season in two hub cities, serving as bubbles for the Eastern and Western Conferences – announced zero positive tests from July 18-25.
The NBA and NHL’s early success suggest the bubble may be the most effective method to play sports amid the pandemic.
“I’m not in the Trump camp in believing it’s all going to go away in two weeks, but I’m praying, praying that there will be a different set of circumstances that will allow us to play in a different way,” Roberts said. “But because I don’t know, all I know is what I know now. So it may be that, if the bubble is the way to play, then that is likely gonna be the way we play next season, if things remain as they are.”
The current target date to begin next the 2020-21 season is currently Dec. 1.
“Nothing is perfect, and knock on wood every day and cross my fingers every day that no one has gotten infected since we’ve been here,” Roberts said. “But this is clearly, we’ve happened upon the way to play. And the players are largely cool with it.”
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