This may all be a tease, sure. Every nugget of news hatched by any of the sports leagues is hungrily devoured and digested these days, even though we are surely a week or two away, at the earliest, from any of the abbreviations that define our sporting lives and our sporting calendars — NBA, NHL, MLB, NFL — declaring, Michael Jordan-style: “We’re back.”
So this could all be a mirage, a puddle of nonexistent spring water anchored in the middle of our shared sporting Sahara, at once seductive and sadistic. All of that is fair.
Still, it feels like it’s the NBA that sustains our optimism bit-by-bit, morsel by morsel. Wednesday’s news, first reported by ESPN, was that NBA teams expect the league office to issue guidelines around June 1 that will allow teams to recall players who’ve left their home markets during the coronavirus pandemic.
As always, it is a small step forward, same as the conference call held last week, conducted by Chris Paul and featuring such heavy-hitters as LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook, the result of which was a virtually united front among the league’s top-line players that they favor some salvation of the 2019-20 season.
Same as the league’s aggressively figuring a way to make a single-site return — likely Orlando, Fla., maybe Vegas — work. All of this helped by the fact that there seems to be a leader in charge — Adam Silver — who all parties trust, certainly in relation to the way most of these relationships have always been in pro sports.
Wednesday’s development is just phase one of a multiple-step plan to put the NBA in position to restart the league in some form or fashion by mid-July. Recalling the players — some of whom returned home to foreign countries — is important, because that will allow phase two — quarantining — to begin. Then, a week or two of individual workouts followed, at last, by a multi-week minicamp.
There is no green light yet.
But even a yellow light feels like a beacon in a barren sports world right now. Also Wednesday, the NCAA announced that football and basketball players — both men and women — will be allowed to return to campus starting June 1 for individual workouts (assuming the states in which their campuses are located permit it). That isn’t exactly watching Ohio State-Michigan with 105,000 folks in the Big House, but it’s a start.
So is this. It is a start. It is something. And all of these small steps mark a profound contrast to the way baseball is conducting its business. Silver and NBPA executive director Michele Roberts aren’t exactly in lockstep on all issues — she did, after all, say of the “hub-city” format on May 8: “It sounds like incarceration to me.” However, there is, for now, a far more tenable bond of trust between those two parties.
We can’t say that about baseball, and it’s too early to say that about football. Gary Bettman’s strong belief that the NHL can resume a 24-team playoff tournament is hopeful. But there are issues: A report out of Canada on Wednesday said the league and its teams have conducted social-distancing models indicating only 2,000-2,500 fans could attend if allowed in for games. There still is nothing close to consensus where these games would be played. And all of this is contingent on the border between the U.S. and Canada opening up again.
So it is the NBA for now leading the way, which is probably the way it should be. After all, back in March, it was the NBA that did the least amount of dawdling at the very start of the civic lockdown, that was first in line to halt, and then suspend, operation. It was ahead of the curve then. It would make sense that it would take a similar path now.
Baby step by baby step.