Boston Celtics veteran center Enes Kanter shared he and the rest of the NBA’s other active players will be meeting with league commissioner Adam Silver today.
Working with National Basketball Players’ Association head Michelle Roberts, Silver will host a call for all players in the league to learn more about NBA plans to resume the 2019-20 season, currently suspended due to the pandemic.
Like most players around the league, Kanter is struggling to stay in the best shape possible for whenever the resumption of NBA activities re-starts, on hold since March 11th.
While the league has moved to allow some teams to access their practice facilities as of today, May 8th, in areas where stay-at-home orders have been relaxed, many organizations — including Boston — will not be able to do so for as long as several weeks beyond that date.
“Right now, we are all waiting,” Kanter said while appearing on CBS Sports HQ Thursday. “Like every team, like every player. In Massachusetts, we cannot open our practice facility until May 18. Right now we are trying our best to stay in shape in our houses, doing a lot of push-ups, doing a lot of crunches and stuff.”
The call, hopefully, will go a long way towards clarifying what will happen in any of the various scenarios the league could find itself in, and is an opportunity for players to inquire about whatever concerns they might have, according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne.
“Once tomorrow hits, because we have a special meeting with Adam Silver where all players join, we are going to learn more about what we can and what we cannot do,” Kanter related. “The NBA is all about player safety and fan safety, so we’re just going to see what Adam Silver says tomorrow … All we can do right now is wait to see what Adam Silver has to say.”
While many aspects of how the pandemic will affect league operations in the short and long term will be discussed in the call, for most players, the first order of business is getting a handle on how training for a resumption will work.
Enes Kanter says NBA commissioner Adam Silver will hold 'special' meeting with players on Fridayhttps://t.co/oHEZEXTKhR
— CBS Sports NBA (@CBSSportsNBA) May 7, 2020
With several weeks of inactivity already on the books, conditioning will be subprime, and injury risk will be higher; “We need to make sure everybody is doing their stuff and is in good shape to go out there and compete if we jump straight into playoffs,” related Kanter.
As time passes, the short-term future of the league is starting to come into focus, and Friday’s call will be one of many adjustments to our lens of understanding the challenges they face.
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