The idea of creating a “bubble” in Las Vegas to restart the NBA season sounds enticing. They have the hotel rooms in the city and the facilities at the UNLV campus (where Summer League takes place), it may need to be a condensed playoffs, but it’s something. It provides hope.
That hope is fading, however. They have tried to use the bubble idea to restart the Chinese Basketball Association — and twice China has had to push back the start of the league as the coronavirus has refused to fade away.
China’s experience has added to a growing pessimism that the NBA can pull off any part of this season, ESPN’S Brian Windhorst said on SportsCenter:
“I think there was optimism about progress a week ago. Some things that have happened this week have turned it south about what could happened…
“The Chinese are finding that asymptomatic carriers are causing maybe a second wave in that country and they’re just slamming the breaks on sports…
“It is clear that the NBA is angling to set up a deal that enables them to shut the season down. They don’t have to do that yet. The way they’re negotiating, they’re leaving an option either way. But they’re not having talks about how to restart the league. They’re having financial talks about what would happen if the season shuts down. I think there’s a significant amount of pessimism.”
That pessimism only grows when you consider the potential impact on the United States from COVID-19, with the White House’s own projections having 100,000 dead on the low end. Add to that the significant economic costs that our nation is just starting to experience and, while a return to basketball and its distraction sounds enticing, it’s also hard to picture.
For example, the idea of putting a “bubble” in Las Vegas (or Orlando or the Bahamas or wherever) is a promising theory on a surface level but becomes a logistical nightmare when trying to make it work in practice.
Are you going to get all the players, coaches, trainers, equipment managers, camera operators (these games will be broadcast), and the rest to self-quarantine for two weeks before they come to the bubble in Vegas? Or, will there be the many hundreds of tests (maybe a 1,000?) needed to screen everyone? What is the rate of false negatives with this test? Can players bring families (they would have to be tested and live in the bubble) or will everyone separate from their family for 6-8 weeks? The league will need about a three-week training camp in the bubble before you can start games, then there would be weeks of games, and all that time the bubble has to be secure. Is that realistic? Do the hotel staff and cooks feeding everyone in the bubble have to stay in the bubble?
That’s not even all of the challenges and it’s daunting. And that is for the “faster” answer of playing all the games in one location and without fans. Who knows how long it will be before teams can fly around the country to play in packed arenas again.
The NBA does not have to make a decision now or even soon, it can wait into May and June and see where things stand with the virus, the economy, and the nation. Still, it’s harder and harder to be an optimist with all of this.
