Kevin Durant’s business manager believes NBA will have a 2020 champion

At the start of April, Kevin Durant’s business manager, Rich Kleiman, didn’t think the 2019-20 season was salvageable. So much was still unclear regarding the novel coronavirus outbreak, leaving not only the NBA, NHL and MLB in a holding pattern, but the entire country, as well.

As of Wednesday, there’s still a lot of unknown. Kleiman still has some level of doubt regarding 2019-20, but when he spoke to Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated on ‘The Crossover’ podcast about the subject, he had changed his tune on the matter:

I believe somehow the NBA will figure out a way. I do really think so. I think two weeks ago I was asked that a few times and I felt this was unsalvageable. But I do think the NBA is going to try its hardest to put something out there to finish the season and declare a champion.

I think that if I was a betting man — and I am — that I would bet that [there] will be some return of play at some point this summer. But, I think it’ll just be a very unconventional and condensed version of what the season was in an attempt to decide a champion.

However, Kleiman also made sure to note players are living through this lockdown like fans, and that the league has to take into account 2020-21 and how this will all impact the members of the 2020 NBA Draft class.

But Kleiman remains confident in how the league will handle the situation because of the way NBA commissioner Adam Silver has approached everything up until now:

It feels like Adam as much as any commissioner, if not more, has a really incredible read of what to do and when to do it, and what the right thing to do is. And I know that he’s as intelligent as they come, so he does the due diligence and makes sure he covers every angle. In this instance, there’s so many different angles and so much information and so much unknown that it’s going to be hard to make a decision in any way prematurely. You can’t, kind of, try it out. This isn’t one of those things where you’re like,’ You know what? Let’s give it a shot.’ Because giving it a shot without checking out all the signs, and all the facts and getting all the clearance, is putting lives at risk. I think that obviously he’ll have to wait ’til the next big benchmark within our country. … Clearly, there won’t be fans. I don’t think there’s any chance there will be fans. I think we all know that.