By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
The NBA has been put on hiatus after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobet became the first player in the league to test positive for coronavirus. While the championship will be suspended for “at least 30 days” according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver, there are potential plans that include resuming the season and the full completion of it, even if it means that games will be played in late July.
“Even if we’re out for a month, if we’re out for six weeks, we can still restart the season. It might mean the Finals take place in July or late. Just my feeling was it was way premature to suggest we had lost the season,” Silver said on NBA TNT.
In the meantime, NBA club owners have been looking into scenarios where the postseason will have their teams playing past July.
“Because there’s not a lot of competition — there’s only regular-season baseball — I don’t think necessarily until August, but I can easily see us playing the last seven-to-10 games of the regular season to get everybody back on course and then going right into the playoffs and going into July, if not August,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said to ESPN’s Get Up.
According to the Los Angeles Times’ Brad Turner, NBA owners are determined to have the 2019-2020 season fully completed even if it requires teams competing as far as in August. Lakers players were informed of this via a conference call with General Manager Rob Pelinka and coach Frank Vogel.
If the NBA season will be running at least until the end of July, this will create a conflict with the schedule of the 2020 Olympics since the Games begin on July 24. It goes without saying that most NBA players won’t be able to participate in the Olympic Qualifiers that are held from June 23 to 28.