N.B.A. Players Miss Other Sports Too

Instinct tells me that league officials and the union would figure out how to extend contracts and manage all the salary cap and calendar tweaks needed to complete the season.

Far harder to imagine, though, is how the league can ensure a sufficient amount of safety from the spread of the coronavirus to secure the buy-in from players, coaches, referees, television crews and everyone else who will be needed to produce games without fans. Everyone wants the league to return as quickly as possible, but are players really going to accept being sequestered in a centralized location for an extended period to play game after game in this fashion? Maybe they will after two or three more months of the current gloom, but these are big asks.

The safest bet, as we finally exit the longest and saddest March this league (and sport) has ever endured: The draft will not happen on June 25 if the league musters tangible hope in coming weeks that it can play some regular-season games this summer. The draft order can’t be set until the regular-season standings are final.

Q: Couldn’t this be, like, the 100th take? — Andrew Goldwasser (Dallas)

Stein: Andrew was responding to my praise on social media for the broadcaster Mike Breen, who sank what I deemed to be a clutch jumper in a public service announcement for the league about the need for vigilant hand-washing and social distancing to fight the coronavirus.

I checked with Breen on Tuesday, and he said he needed only two takes. Breen’s daughter Nicole, who works for the N.B.A. in its youth development department, filmed the clip, which Breen said needed a redo because he flubbed a line on the first try after making that shot as well.

I wasn’t there to witness any of this, but I am vouching for the Knicks’ play-by-play man and ESPN veteran. Be a skeptic if you wish, but listen to the energy he brings in that 45-second speech. If he had missed a bunch of shots, forcing retakes, I don’t think we’d hear that sort of vitality in his voice.

Unfortunately I know this firsthand: Retakes bring you down. We’d be able to tell if Breen — who in February was named the Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2020 Curt Gowdy Award winner for broadcasting excellence — had been repeatedly clanking and starting over.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/sports/basketball/coronavirus-nba-soccer.html