How Many Coronavirus Cases would it take to Derail the NBA’s Restart?

As the number of positive cases continues to rise, the NBA needs to be more self-aware about what’s at stake with the upcoming season restart in Orlando.

The NBA is slowly marching towards its announced restart scheduled for the end of July. But as we get closer to the date, there seem to be more and more fires for the league to put out.

There’s been a lot of push-back from players who are passionate about the Black Lives Matter movement that’s ongoing. The worry for some is that resuming play would distract the country from the important moment it’s having right now.

The league has started coming to terms with the NBA Players Association on different ways to integrate awareness into their broadcast and allow the players a platform to speak out.

However, the coronavirus pandemic that caused the suspension in the first place remains as potent a threat as ever. As we get closer and closer to the return of basketball, the list of players testing positive for the virus is also slowly growing.

At what point does the league need to ask itself the big question — is the NBA restart still worth it?

For better or for worse, the league’s answer continues to be a resounding yes as they chase the payday that they risk losing for good.

How the NBA is Dealing with the Impending Restart

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is “pretty confident” that the league remains on track to resume regular-season game action in Orlando.

Despite all that’s ongoing to mar a smooth resumption of play, Silver is still trying to manage everything one day at a time. During an appearance on Time 100 Talks, Silver was asked about the possibility of having to reconsider the plan in place to restart in Disney World and canceling the season entirely.

“Never full steam ahead no matter what,” Silver responded to TIME. “One thing we are learning about this virus is much [is] unpredictable, and we and our players together with their union look at the data on a daily basis.

“We are testing daily. We haven’t put a precise number on it, but if we were to see a large number of cases and see spread in our community, that would of course be a cause to stop as well.”

But when Silver was questioned on how they would determine at what exact point the case count is large enough or the spread severe enough like he said, he didn’t really give a straight forward answer.

“We are going to see as we go,” Silver said. “Certainly if cases are isolated, that’s one thing. A lot of the determination will be our understanding of how our community became infected.

That will be part of our judgment in terms of whether we should continue. But certainly if we had a lot of cases, we are going to stop. You cannot run from this virus.”

Although the NBA and its commissioner are of course doing their due diligence to ensure to safety and overall feasibility of a late-summer return, their judgement will definitely be clouded.

There are billions of dollars in NBA revenue at stake for the league, and the NBA players themselves. While Silver can’t put a firm number on the maximum volume of cases that the league can stomach, they may very well move the goal posts way further back just by virtue of dollars and cents.

NBA Teams and Officials need to Take a Step Back

We heard from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski that the Denver Nuggets have temporarily closed their squad’s training facility after two people scheduled to be part of their 30-plus party to Orlando tested positive for the virus.

Both the team’s star Nikola Jokic, and their head coach Michael Malone previously tested positive for the coronavirus themselves.

In the recent days, two players from the Brooklyn Nets — center DeAndre Jordan and guard Spencer Dinwiddie have registered as positive for the virus as well.

Jordan has announced his decline from participation, meanwhile Dinwiddie’s decision is still up in the air as of the time of writing.

Pelicans GM David Griffin also recently came out with the latest news that three of their players tested positive.

This he shared for an interview via a virtual press conference on Twitter:

“We’ve had multiple players test positive. The league has a system in place that was designed to catch these cases. That system worked, and we’re just going to deal with it the best we can moving forward.

From a basketball standpoint, I think you’re going to see COVID have an enormous impact on teams, and even some of the teams that went into the bubble as a playoff seed. So again, this is something where we’re all at the mercy of the same enemy.

Griffin didn’t seem all too deterred by the news. But of course, that’s under the lens of the league’s and teams’ desires to restart. Else, they risk losing out on all the TV money that’s hanging in the balance.

David Griffin spoke of how players testing positive affects teams from a basketball standpoint. However, this virus is something that goes completely beyond the 94 feet of NBA hardwood.

Not only would this affect the ability for teams to field their best players, but the major crux here is also that it puts the lives of NBA players, coaches, and behind-the-scenes workers’ lives at risk.

The danger of not being able to determine a hard cap in total positive cases is that they might push the invisible boundaries way beyond the safe zone.

While many players and fans alike would want the league to resume and return a semblance of normalcy back into their lives, the league needs to understand that just one case is already one too many.

The league is already playing with fire as is. But it becomes dangerous if they don’t acknowledge when the fire gets too big for them to still play.

The NBA and all the other sports leagues are trying to bring us the live entertainment we’ve sorely missed while stuck in quarantine. But at the end of the day, they’ll be risking real lives for just a handful of basketball games. The only difference between us not being allowed to play pick-up games at the park, and them playing in Orlando is the amount of money on the table.

All it takes is one bad case that spreads throughout the playing site to burst the bubble they’ll be building. Imagine the backlash if a case gets so severe that it results in serious illness, or possibly even worse.

The NBA is clearly trying to adapt to the new normal.

But even against the backdrop of an ever-changing definition of what normal means, the return to play in Orlando will be anything but that.