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After at least 14 people on the Miami Marlins roster and staff tested positive for the coronavirus, Oklahoma City Thunder point guard and National Basketball Players Association president Chris Paul was asked Monday how that outbreak might affect NBA plans.
Paul, just getting out of morning practice, said he had not yet heard about the Marlins’ COVID-19 reports.
“It almost sounds similar to us back in March, before we knew things,” he said on a Zoom call. “I’m sure they’re probably doing all their research to try to figure out how to keep everybody as safe as possible.”
Paul didn’t express concern about possible contaminants in the NBA bubble with the protocols the league has placed on people entering the area.
“There’s people that are working night and day on the league side and the union side trying to make sure everyone is safe here,” Paul said. “I wish them the best. I hope everybody’s safe and healthy, and I know we’ll keep monitoring here, and hopefully we can keep everyone here on this campus as safe as possible.”
The Orlando bubble has been highly successful over its first few weeks. The latest coronavirus test results showed that nobody tested positive, and stringent measures in the bubble appear to have been upheld.
But with next season just five months away from its scheduled start, the NBA needs to take into consideration the Marlins coronavirus outbreak and response as the league plans out the 2020-21 year.
It’s unrealistic to expect a 30-team, 82-game schedule to take place in a bubble. In addition to the logistics of housing all those teams, the six-month regular season followed by the playoffs would likely be too long of a separation from the players’ families for the union or many individual players to agree to.
Paul said Monday that as far as he is aware, no discussions have taken place about plans for next season.
Thunder general manager Sam Presti said last week that it is too early to start thinking about next season in regard to the coronavirus, and he warned about planning “yourself into a pretzel.”
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“We have to wait for things to evolve and see where things are at season’s end and make our future decisions from there,” he said in a Zoom call with media.
“So much is reliant on what’s happening with the pandemic and the effect it’s having on people, on the economy, and all the different things that the country’s going through.”
Yet it’s been less than a week of the MLB season and more than a dozen people around the league have tested positive for COVID-19.
The NBA has time on its side — the bubble has held up through three weeks and next season isn’t scheduled to start until December — but there’s a realistic chance that coronavirus numbers don’t drop enough to legitimately decrease the risk of infection outside a bubble environment.
MLB will address this first. The NFL also must consider this before starting games, as do college sports.
The NBA will look at these leagues and the results of the bubble to figure out the immediate future of the game.
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