How The Rockets-Thunder Delay Could Foreshadow Challenges To This NBA Season

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24 Дек 2020, 21:18

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James Harden of the Houston Rockets was fined $50,000 for violating the NBA’s health and safety protocols. He’s seen on the court during a preseason game against the San Antonio Spurs on Dec. 17.

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There’s no word on when the Rockets-Thunder game will be held, or the status of Houston’s game Saturday against the Portland Trail Blazers.

«Welcome to the new normal,» Bill Reiter of CBS Sports said. «Even asymptomatic cases — positive tests, even if accompanied by a healthy individual — will have the power to grind the gears of this season, if not to a halt, at least to a lurching and awkward reality.»

All of this presents a unique set of challenges for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who successfully rebooted the NBA season in July with 22 teams playing at a single location in Florida. The league had been shut down since March 11, when the severity and scope of the coronavirus pandemic was just beginning to become clear.

The format produced wildly entertaining play, culminating in the Los Angeles Lakers winning the NBA championship over the Miami Heat. Perhaps the biggest achievement, as NPR’s Reese Oxner reported, is that the NBA reported zero positive coronavirus cases inside the bubble.

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The new season, however, presents new obstacles. Thirty franchises are participating in games. It makes enforcing coronavirus protocols a challenge, to say the least, increasing the likelihood of games being postponed, at best, or fully stopped.

«Is it possible that the season could get postponed?» Silver said during an interview with ESPN on Monday. «Of course. Nobody can predict precisely the trajectory of this virus. It’s been terrible, frankly.»

Other leagues like the NFL and college football have been hard-hit by athletes contracting the virus, leading to games being postponed or rescheduled. Several games at the collegiate level were canceled altogether.

Silver is attempting to hold an entire season of a contact sport that is played indoors. And unlike the bubble format, at least six franchises, including Houston, will welcome some of its fans into arenas.

«Now that we’re trying something new, an indoor sport … [with] different protocols that we haven’t had in place before,» Silver said. «I think we wouldn’t be acting responsibly and I wouldn’t be acting responsibly if I said it’s full steam ahead no matter what.»

The commissioner also noted that «there’s no way we’d ever jump the line» when it comes to NBA athletes receiving COVID-19 vaccines.

Silver said that because the majority of players are young and healthy, «they will not be a high priority» for the vaccine, but he added that some older NBA personnel would be given priority for the vaccine.