No one really knows when the 2019-20 NBA season will resume, or if it will, but in the meantime, players, coaches and analysts are floating theories about what could or couldn’t work.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has already come out and said he believes play will be restarted before June 1, but given what the numbers are around the United States, with the curves certainly not flattening — instead going the other way — it’s hard to believe that’ll be the case.
There are all sorts of possibilities as for how to rest of the season will play out. The season could resume again in June or July, finishing in the fall, and pushing back the beginning of the 2020-21 season until Christmas Day, or thereabouts.
The league could also choose to begin by rolling with the current regular-season records for the purposes of playoff seeding, and bypassing the final 17-18 games or so. There’d obviously have to be a warm-up period as well, so players can practice with their teams and get their bodies right. Games could be played in their normal arenas, or possibly even in closed practice facilities.
LeBron James, however, is not a fan of that idea, which he shared on Uninterrupted’s “Road Trippin’ Podcast,” in speaking to former teammates Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye.
“One thing you can’t just do is go straight to the playoffs,” he said, as transcribed by ESPN’s Dave McMenamic. “Because it discredits the 60-plus games that guys had fighting for that position.”
He continued on the subject of a revised playoff format:
“When you’ve been building six months of conditioning and preparation and then (it’s gone), the narrative that I don’t like (is), ‘Well, now guys get so much rest.’ Or, like, ‘LeBron, he’s 35, he’s got so many minutes on his body, now he gets so much rest,’ ” James added. “It’s actually the opposite for me because my body, when we stopped playing, was asking me, like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ My body was like, ‘Hey man, what the hell is going on? It’s March 13th, you’re getting ready for the playoffs, why are you shutting down right now?’ And I was right there turning the corner, like, I felt like I was rounding third base, getting ready for the postseason. So the rest factor, I think it’s a little bit (overblown). Especially when you’re in the full swing of things.”
It’s really not James’ call anyway, as the state of coronavirus will likely dictate how the remainder of the season plays out — if it does.
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