Week in Review: Raptors, NBA Progressing to a Return
A week ago I asked if the NBA should return this season and the responses were pretty divided. Now, a week later, and it seems the NBA is well on its way back to basketball this year.
Here are a few things we learned this week:
· The NBA is expected to announce guidelines for recalling players back to their respective team cities on June 1, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe. This could pose a bit of a problem for the Raptors who have players on both sides of the Canadian-U.S. Border right now, which is closed to all non-essential travel until June 21.
· While Toronto was reportedly mentioned by Commissioner Adam Silver as a potential "Bubble City" cite, the NBA seems to have zeroed in on Orlando as its preferred destination, potentially along with Vegas, according to The Athletic's Sam Amick and Shams Charania.
· The "bubble" won't really be a bubble, Lakers forward Jared Dudley told reporters Wednesday. "You will be allowed to leave," Dudley said. "Now just because you leave, if we're going to give you that leeway, if you come back with corona, you can't play." It's unclear how this back and forth will work, but it's definitely something the NBA needs to figure out to safely bring back basketball.
· There is a silent group of people within the league that would rather not see the season start back up again, according to Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix. "Safety concerns are real, as is the fear among some executives about the risk of injury to star players dropped into a playoff situation after what could be close to four months off," Mannix writes.
· How is the league going to deal with players who don't want to come back? There are two types of players that fit into this category: Players on teams out of the playoffs and players with pre-existing conditions. Yahoo's Chris Haynes reported last Tuesday that "the majority of players who are essentially eliminated from postseason contention would rather the league start back up with the top eight teams in each conference competing in some sort of playoff." The other side of this is players like Larry Nance Jr., the Cleveland Cavaliers forward who has Crohn's disease and uses a therapy that also suppresses his immune system.
Aaron Rose covers the Toronto Raptors and Canadian basketball for Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on Twitter @aaronbenrose or on Facebook @AllRaptors.
