Boston’s Enes Kanter hears some players won’t play in resumed season

Boston Celtic center Enes Kanter is hearing some players don’t want to risk their health to play in a resumed season.

Not everyone in the NBA is excited about the prospect of a return to action in July, relates Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter.

With many questions yet unanswered about what the resumption of the 2019-20 NBA season will look like, it’s understandable there’s trepidation about the risk that might come with gathering the entire league in Orlando, Florida in the middle of a pandemic.

Of course the NBA may limit the resumption to teams which have a chance to make the playoffs, but even then the question remains about what players’ families are going to be doing for weeks on end.

Speaking to former Celtic and CLNS podcast host Cedric Maxwell on his eponymous podcast, Kanter raised exactly that point.

“Many people have families and … if you put all the players in a bubble what [are] the families going to do?”

“You cannot put them in a bubble for two months and say, ‘Okay, do not leave the hotel’. But, on the other side, if you put the families in that bubble, then you’re putting their life at risk, too,” he added.

“Until they find the cure, [or a] vaccine, I think it’s going to be tough, man. The NBA’s forgetting about — if a player gets sick and somebody had to, they could sue the NBA big time. There’s so many folks out there, man, I have no idea.”

“But Adam [Silver, NBA Commissioner] said, all the team owners want to compete, and go out there and compete.

That’s no question. It’s all going to come to him [on] how they’re going to do it,” offered the Turkish big man.

“I have no idea how they’re going to do it, because I’m hearing that — not from the Celtics, but there are some other team’s players out there, that they don’t want to play. They’re like, ‘It’s just a game. I’m not going to risk my life. I’m not going to risk my family’s lives and put their lives on the line to just go out there and play a game. I’m not playing'”.

“We want to go out there and compete,” Kanter noted, emphasizing this was not coming from players on the Celtics.

“But when we had that NBPA [National Basketball Players’ Association] a meeting, and they said it they said ‘Hey, there’s other team players that … don’t want to play.”

For the non-playoff teams, this makes nothing but sense.

And with all the chaos coming from the pandemic, protests over George Floyd’s death and more, we may well see more players become vocal about wanting certain assurances in place for their own and their families’ safety before we get firm commitments out of them to play.

[lawrence-related id=36218,36208,36121,36113]