Can Taiwan Provide the NBA a Model For Resuming Games?

Saturday marks the one-month anniversary of the NBA's coronavirus suspension, and there is no end in sight as the league looks to avoid canceling the 2019-20 season. 

There have been rumblings regarding potential start dates throughout the last month, and the NBA reportedly considers early September as the latest possible time to finish the 2019-20 season. But despite the prognostications, there's currently no way to know when the league will return, if at all. 

The NBA appears to be getting creative as it looks to work past the COVID-19 crisis. The league is certainly willing to trim its schedule, and more radical measures aren't off the table. Las Vegas could host the entire 2020 playoffs, creating a quarantined environment at a series of facilities and hotels. Is such a project even feasible? Taiwan's Super Basketball League could provide a model. 

The SBL has continued to play through the COVID-19 crisis, relocating games  from an arena to the HaoYu Basketball Training Center, according to the New York Times' Marc Stein. All games are held in buildings with less than 100 occupants, with only select training and media personnel allowed along with players, coaches and officials. In theory, the NBA could attempt similar policies. 

The NBA could directly follow the SBL model in a vacuum, but Taiwan's effective response to the coronavirus outbreak alters the picture. There have been, "fewer than 400 reported COVID-19 cases and only six deaths as of April 10," per Stein. Taiwan, "has coped with the coronavirus pandemic as well as any."

Perhaps improved response in the United States could allow for games to safely return. The NBA will likely do all it can to ensure it receives revenue for the 2019-20 season, especially the television money through what was shaping up to be a thrilling playoffs. Yet even if games return, the NBA is unlikely to be returning to normal by any stretch of the imagination. 

“You need the fans," SBL forward Charles Garcia told Stein. "I can’t even imagine that in the NBA."