It May Take Almost A Month After The NBA Rules It’s Safe To Resume Its Season Until Actual Basketball Is Played Thanks To A Proposed Training Period

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It’s now been over a month since The Day The Sports World Stood Still, a truly surreal period where the biggest organizations in North America made the difficult (but absolutely correct) decision to suspend or cancel their season in a chain reaction that was sparked when Rudy Gobert’s stupidity resulted in a positive test that didn’t really leave Adam Silver with any other options.

The past 33 days have felt like eons for sports fans, and even though leagues have done what they can in an attempt to fill the void, video game tournaments and fairly disastrous HORSE competitions have failed to scratch that metaphorical itch on the part of your back you can’t reach no matter how hard you try.

“When will we wake up from this nightmare?” is the question on everyone’s mind right now but the sad truth is there’s no real way of knowing, and despite what Dabo Swinney would have you believe, the current problem we’re dealing with can not be willed out of existence with the power of patriotism.

With that said, a number of the governing bodies currently in a holding pattern have begun to put together plans for when we finally reach a state of semi-normalcy, as the NHL has explored the option of self-isolating itself in North Dakota and Major League Baseball is looking into a marginally less remote setting in the form of Phoenix.

The NBA, on the other hand, could potentially play spectatorless games in at least one as-of-yet undetermined location. However, over the weekend, Brian Windhorst preemptively put a bit of a damper on any celebrations there may be once (or if) the league announces it’s firing up the engines, as they’ll reportedly be idle for a 25-day period to give players and teams a chance to gear up to play out the remainder of the schedule.

Here’s what the proposed transition looks like:

“What they’re looking at is a 25-day return to basketball window. Hopefully at some point they can enact it.

An 11-day series of individual workouts, where there’d be social distancing for a period of time, and then hopefully, if the clearance comes that they can play five-on-five basketball, a 14-day training camp.”

I think most people would agree that knowing there’s basketball on the horizon is better than not having any at all. However, if you thought the night before Christmas felt like an endless wait when you were a kid, just wait until you have to deal with three-and-a-half weeks of anticipation.