NBA in talks to resume play at Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex

Yappi

Yappi

Go Buckeyes
"The NBA, in conjunction with the National Basketball Players Association, is engaged in exploratory conversations with The Walt Disney Company about restarting the 2019-20 NBA season in late July at Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida as a single site for an NBA campus for games, practices and housing," Bass said. "Our priority continues to be the health and safety of all involved, and we are working with public health experts and government officials on a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure that appropriate medical protocols and protections are in place."
 
 
I would think most players are ready to just wait for the 2020-21 season and hope it happens.
 
Not sure all the players agree but I think many of the fans are starting to feel this way. There might even be some 20-21 games started before the 19-20 season is ended.
 
Listened to Cuban talk about this two weeks ago and his opinion was that the players (mavs) want to finish this season. He did say the players wanted to have at least 20 games before the playoffs. He did say if they cant pull it off buy late July it should be nixed. He also wanted to start the NBA on christmas day moving forward regardless of Corona and I think that is a brilliant move
 
I think the contrary.
I think many of the teams feel this is a way to get an el cheapo championship!
 
Several things to unpack here. First and foremost, these guys are professional basketball players, professional athletes. They want to play ball. It's what they do. Now I'm sure if you polled the players you'd have at least 60% who'd play tomorrow if a game was scheduled. I'm sure many are playing their own secret pickup games in some offshoot YMCA or high school gym somewhere.

But since the NBA is "woke" we have to make it political and of course Donald Trump invented corona and is the devil, so they'll go kicking and screaming because this is how young people deal with adversity these days.

So here's the most fascinating part of this that nearly no one talks about. We have youth sports leagues beginning seasons today and within the next few weeks all across the country, yet these pro sports and colleges can't seem to figure out the logistics of getting things started?? But anyway, so we have some but not all of the NBA teams in their individual camp sites, a few players at a time. It's been determined that these leagues will open up with no fans. But for some reason, instead of having 30 teams in 30 cities reopen individually, we want to send all 30 teams, their staffs and families to Disney in Florida and hold the entire season there?? Now on the surface that sounds great, but someone has to convince me that there is a difference between them having practices and games in Detroit, Philly, Boston and LA, as opposed to having them all at Disney? I see no health advantage of doing it that way.
But wait, here's the reason. It's not a secret that the NBA's broadcasting partner for the last several years is ESPN/ ABC. Coincidentally, Disney is owned by... class....ABC!!!!
Disney is sitting empty, losing millions a day. I suppose the NBA decided they could do ESPN/ ABC a HUGE favor and just move their entire season along with millions of network dollars to the Disney complex. Put the teams/ families up in the resorts and everyone would be happy. Well, sort of.

If I was a team owner, I'd be livid. I guess the idea of having any games in your own cities are out the window? And any fans? I mean if you had the NBA finals, couldn't you at least have 30-40% capacity in the arenas? I just think the league took that option out because of it's relationship with ESPN and Disney and that's crap.
 
To be fair youth sports aren't truly "open", at least anywhere where people are even remotely following the "rules". You have non-contact training for some sports in small groups and games in sports like baseball where it's not overly difficult to stay away from others 95% of the time.

Sending the pros to somewhere like Disney to pump out an abbreviated season makes sense by the guidelines in place. It eliminates travel and quarantines all necessary personnel to their own bubble for the duration of finishing the season. Considering how badly ESPN/ABC severely overpaid the NBA (and by extension the owners and players) for their current media deal, none of them should be whining about going to Disney World for the summer.
 
nwwarrior09 said:
To be fair youth sports aren't truly "open", at least anywhere where people are even remotely following the "rules". You have non-contact training for some sports in small groups and games in sports like baseball where it's not overly difficult to stay away from others 95% of the time.

Sending the pros to somewhere like Disney to pump out an abbreviated season makes sense by the guidelines in place. It eliminates travel and quarantines all necessary personnel to their own bubble for the duration of finishing the season. Considering how badly ESPN/ABC severely overpaid the NBA (and by extension the owners and players) for their current media deal, none of them should be whining about going to Disney World for the summer.
Click to expand...
So just let me play along here. So for most of the country other than NYC, people are going back to work (some never stopped), and we are going to stores, restaurants and things seem to be opening up.
Why in pro sports, or any sports for that matter, where the participants are mostly age 40 and younger, in the NBA the average age is probably about 25, is there a need for all the "rules". Let's look at the data, if you take the death numbers of covid for nursing home patients and prisons out of the total, you have a number that is around the average of a typical year of flu deaths.
So why are we doing all these precautionary things for a group of guys who have such a little percentage of anything actually happening.

I'll still say this is just an excuse to have it in Disney.
 
Red14 said:
So just let me play along here. So for most of the country other than NYC, people are going back to work (some never stopped), and we are going to stores, restaurants and things seem to be opening up.
Why in pro sports, or any sports for that matter, where the participants are mostly age 40 and younger, in the NBA the average age is probably about 25, is there a need for all the "rules". Let's look at the data, if you take the death numbers of covid for nursing home patients and prisons out of the total, you have a number that is around the average of a typical year of flu deaths.
So why are we doing all these precautionary things for a group of guys who have such a little percentage of anything actually happening.

I'll still say this is just an excuse to have it in Disney.
Click to expand...

I think the need for "rules" is largely overblown based upon minimal risk to participants (be they youth or professional), but the outrage brigade is going to be out in full force if a professional league is skirting "best practices". The short-term image consequences are going to be bad if they don't play along.

Even if that is the case, considering how abundantly rich Disney has made all of them scratching the mouse's back is small potatoes.
 
If they do do something, I would say that IMO it doesn't make sense to bring every team back being 65+ games into the season unless they want to do something like a play-in tournament for the playoffs for the teams with no realistic playoff shot. Otherwise, after a few months off they may as well just call it a season for the teams like the Cavs and the Warriors and just have the teams in playoff contention in action.
 
nwwarrior09 said:
I think the need for "rules" is largely overblown based upon minimal risk to participants (be they youth or professional), but the outrage brigade is going to be out in full force if a professional league is skirting "best practices". The short-term image consequences are going to be bad if they don't play along.

Even if that is the case, considering how abundantly rich Disney has made all of them scratching the mouse's back is small potatoes.
Click to expand...
I really think only 5-10% and the national media is the only ones paying attention to any "best practices". If there's one thing American's don't like, it's being told what to do.
 
Silver today announced that the NBA is targeting July 31 as a start date... Not June, but July, a full two months from now. And we thought baseball spring training is long??
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top