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With sports leagues across the globe beginning to resume — UFC 249 went down on Saturday, with the German Bundesliga set to kick off this weekend — the attention of sports fans continues to turn toward the American professional sports leagues, particularly the NBA.
Shut down over two months ago, the NBA is reportedly working towards resuming their season sometime this summer. According to reports, several high-profile NBA superstars — such as LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant — were involved in a private conference call and formed a united front to resume the season.
The biggest hurdle in the way of the NBA resuming their 2019-20 season is, obviously, the potential risk of another outbreak. In Germany, Bundesliga 2 team Dynamo Dresden had a handful of players test positive, thus canceling their upcoming match against Hanover. However, despite the positive tests, the Bundesliga will be continuing forward with resuming their season and will simply quarantine infected players and squads as they come.
It seems like the NBA will be taking a similar approach, as reports indicate that the league will not be completely shutting down should a player test positive.
Tuesday, however, brought word that if the NBA manages to restart its season in an attempt to crown a champion in 2020, a single positive COVID-19 diagnosis would not create the same chaos. Amid reports from various insiders about a conversation between major stars in the NBA and a conference call about the possibility of the league restarting later this summer was a theme stressed by NBA commissioner Adam Silver about the risks associated with a restart. Namely, if someone comes down with COVID-19 the league would not shut down immediately like it did in March. [via Uproxx]
ESPN Sources: Attendees left Board of Governors call w/ Adam Silver today feeling positive about momentum toward an NBA return to play this season. Discussion included how league/players will need to get comfortable w/ some positive tests for virus not shutting down a resumption
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 13, 2020
At the rate the league is currently progressing — should the 2019-20 season resume — it likely won’t happen until late June or early July.
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Eric is a New York City-based writer who still isn’t quite sure how he’s allowed to have this much fun for a living and will tell anyone who listens that Gotham City is canonically in New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter @eric_ital for movie and soccer takes or contact him eric@brobible.com