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The current basketball landscape, in a single .gif:
The month of March has come and gone, and here we stand (sit?): organized basketball is indefinitely paused. Shoot, so is disorganized basketball; I haven’t been able to join my regular pick-up game for weeks, and I am missing that just as much as I’m missing the Milwaukee Bucks.
ESPN Sources: The NBA and NBPA are discussing scenarios for withholding up to 25 percent of players remaining salaries in a league escrow should regular-season games eventually be cancelled. Story: https://t.co/KlGLY85nMp
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) April 1, 2020
We are nowhere near the end of this, either. The league desperately wants to resume play, both for financial reasons and for something – anything! – resembling closure for this season. The NBA is looking across the Pacific at the Chinese Basketball Association’s plan for resuming operations...but the outlook isn’t yet clear.
The CBA hasn’t formally announced a plan, but multiple sources said that what has been drawn up includes clustering teams in one or two cities and playing one another in a round-robin format in empty arenas over several weeks. There are 16 games left for each of the 20 teams in the league. The goal has been to play out the remaining schedule in full before moving on to the playoffs, with the hope that fans could eventually be admitted.
The NBA could do something similar, whether it’s in Las Vegas, or somewhere else, but all that can be done right now is planning and theorizing. No action can be taken until the COVID-19 situation starts to decline and the infection rate drops. Who knows when that will happen? This month? Next month? Later?
Total #COVIDー19 cases and deaths, Midwest
— Dan Shafer (@DanRShafer) March 31, 2020
IL: 5,994 (+937) | 99 (+26)
IN: 2,159 (+343) | 49 (+14)
IA: 497 (+73) | 7 (+1)
MI: 7,615 (+1,117) | 259 (+75)
MN: 629 (+53) | 12 (+2)
OH: 2,199 (+266) | 55 (+16)
WI: 1,351 (+130) | 16 (+2)
Region total: 20,444 (+3,019) | 497 (+136) pic.twitter.com/9gOX0sGPlh
(For Midwest-centric coverage, check out friend of the site Dan Shafer’s Twitter feed, as he’s been keeping a local perspective on this global crisis.)
The good news is that the Bucks, according to Jon Horst and coach Mike Budenholzer, who are not admitting defeat in this battle.
To be clear, they don't know any of the details of how or when the season could resume. In that way, they're just like all of us. They're just choosing to operate under the belief that games in the 2019-20 season will resume and they want to be prepared for that possibility. https://t.co/Qa5bYnooHj
— Matt Velazquez (@Matt_Velazquez) April 1, 2020
In the meantime, how are you doing? What strategies have you used to try and maintain a sense or normalcy, or barring that, at least a sense of sanity?
Also, please continue to stay home. The isolation is miserable, but it’s a necessary price to make sure that the coronavirus spreads to as few people as possible. Consider the social distancing your part in getting the NBA to come back as soon as possible.