As the NBA prepares to officially restart its season in its bubble inside the Walt Disney World Resort on Thursday – and other sports, especially Major League Baseball, are battling to tackle the ongoing coronavirus pandemic – the executive director of National Basketball Players Association Michele Roberts said returning to a bubble may be the only possible way for the NBA to complete next season too.
“If tomorrow is like today, I don’t know how they say we can do it differently,” Roberts told ESPN in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. “If tomorrow seems today, and today we all recognize it – and this is not Michele, this is the championship, together with the AP and our respective experts who say:” This is the way to do it “- then it is going to be the way to do it. “
Roberts is in the NBA bubble as the league completes its final day of scrimmages on Tuesday and has approached to kick off the resumption of its season at 6:30 PM ET on Thursday, when New Orleans pelicans face Utah Jazz. So far, the NBA has been going on for three weeks without a positive test inside the bubble, and only two have occurred at all – both when the players arrived on campus, thus preventing COVID-19 from penetrating it.
The MLB, on the other hand, is attempting to end its season with teams traveling from city to city and playing in their home stadiums, albeit without fans. After an outbreak within the Miami Marlins, which saw 17 members of the team’s travel team test the virus positively, causing the team’s games to be postponed for the rest of this week, along with those among the Philadelphia Phillies – the Miami’s latest opponent – and the New York Yankees, it’s clear how difficult it will be to try sports outside of a closed and sterile environment.
“I’m not in Trump’s camp in believing everything will disappear in two weeks, but I’m praying, praying that there are a different set of circumstances that will allow us to play in a different way,” Roberts said. “But since I don’t know, all I know is what I know now. So it could be that if the bubble is the way to play, then it will probably be the way we play next season, if things stay the way they are. .
“I hope not. Because I would like to think that people can live with their families. But I can only comment on what I know and what I know is right now.”
When the NBA announced its plan to resume the 2019-2020 season, it set a target date for December 1 to begin the 2020-21 campaign.
What Roberts knows now is that, at least so far, the bubble works. And, after expressing to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne in May that she was worried that a bubble might make players feel like they were jailed, Roberts said she is quite satisfied with the conditions on the ground.
“I was worried that it would seem a little too similar to an armed camp,” said Roberts. “I really was. I said, ‘Look. You can’t jail people. Even if it’s a nice prison, if it’s a prison, it’s still a prison.’
“But having arrived here, sure there are some things [that you have to do] – having to take your temperature and test. But it couldn’t be easier. For me to respect the health and safety protocols, obviously I have to wear a mask and everything else, but the affirmative things you have to do are really simple and the structures in which the players are able to play and the training are absolutely consistent with the quality they must have and are used to using. The medical facilities and doctors on campus are not worried about anyone getting sick and unable to get absolutely immediate healthcare. So, no, I’m completely satisfied that we’ve come up with the right protocol.
“Nothing is perfect, knock on the wood every day and cross your fingers every day that no one has been infected since we are here. But this is clearly, we happened to play. And the players are largely cool with it.”
In the meantime, the league and union have also begun to prepare for negotiations on how to take care of what will almost certainly be a sharp drop in revenue next season due to the ongoing pandemic, which will make it difficult to play a complete program either, more importantly, play in front of paying fans. In a phone call with players in May, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that the money generated from participating in live games could represent up to 40 percent of the league’s annual revenue.
Roberts said the two sides “are starting some high-level discussions about what the potential issues are,” and said the laborious process needed for the NBA and the union to figure out how to put the bubble together, and then actually move on. through the process of doing it, “he brought almost all the oxygen out of the room.”
One thing Roberts said she is sure of, however, is that when the two sides sit down and talk about how to handle the likely drop in revenue for next season, there will be no discussion of a complete renegotiation of the league’s collective bargaining agreement. . While both sides may waive the current deal by December 15, 2022, Roberts said it isn’t his concern at the moment.
“My preference is that we take care of the only things we have to deal with, and that is to deal with what is supposedly going to be a revenue reduction of some consequences,” he said. “So no, the idea of speeding up a renegotiation of the CBA, no. It’s not something that has been addressed and, I dare say, it won’t happen.
“We will do what we have to do and no more, and then we will move on.”
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