Sports Time Radio

As cities and states try to get the way of life people are use to back up and running all sports organizations are trying t get their league up and running. Some states have started to reopen businesses that had been closed down due to the pandemic and along with those businesses reopening the NBA has decided to open up it’s facilities to it’s players.

Now there are some new guidelines put in place by the NBA that players and team employees will have to follow. No more than four players would be permitted at a facility at any one time. No head or assistant coaches could participate. Players remain prohibited from using non-team facilities such as public health clubs, fitness centers or gyms. Group activity remains prohibited, including practices or scrimmages. Also lifting weights with a spotter will be prohibited if it forces the player to be within 12 feet of a staffer. Players in team facilities must wear facemasks at all times except during physical activity. Team staffers must also stay 12 feet away from them. The NBA will allow a total of six assistant or player development coaches to supervise these works. Head coaches will not be allowed.

The NBA’s decision to reopen practice facilities was based on Georgia’s plan to slowly reopen its economy. It seemed as players where considered traveling there to facilitate workouts in ways the NBA considered unsafe. The Atlanta Hawks are Georgia’s only NBA team, but they’ve decided to not open their facilities on May 1st.

There was an National Basketball Players Association phone call with it’s players and they invited commissioner Adam Silver to join the call and address the players. There was an audio taped of the one hour long call released.

The NBPA’s executive director Michele Roberts and NBPA president Chris Paul as well as several players asked commissioner Silver questions during the conversation.

The players asked commissioner some difficult questions including how future seasons would be affected and the financial realities of future salary caps and basketball related income. Commissioner Silver also had to handle some difficult questions about how the league would handle players safety.

It was mentioned that returning to play this season at one or two potential sites including Orlando and Las Vegas made the most sense. There was also no mention on if fans would be in attendance for these games.

The commissioner expressed a desire that the NBA complete its season with a traditional playoff structure that includes seven-game series in each round, but he left open the possibility of play in tournaments to accommodate more teams in resumption of a shortened season. Silver also told players that the start of next season could be pushed until December, regardless of whether this season was completed.

Commissioner Silver discussed how the CBA wasn’t built for a pandemic and were issues that needed to be collectively bargained with the NBPA. Among those issues Silver mentioned how future basketball related income and salary caps would be affected by massive decreases in revenue.

As for returning to play this season; Silver indicated discussions around training camp length in the resumption of the season centered on a minimum of three weeks. Silver said the NBA’s hope would be that players who test positive for Covid-19 won’t require shutting down a team or season, but only the removal of a player amid persistent testing of those who had come into contact with him.

It was reported by ESPN that the NBA estimates it would need in the neighborhood of 15,000 tests to resume and complete its season.

Now I’ve said all along that the NBA and the NHL should either end these seasons as is or come back when it’s safe and go right into the playoffs. Something commissioner Silver said that caught my attention and I believe it’s the biggest reason these leagues don’t want to give up these regular season games. Commissioner Silver mentioned that 40% of the NBA’s revenue comes from money built around regular season and playoff games being played in the arenas.

That would be a large chunk of money for the NBA to walk away from and you know they’re going to do everything in their power to not have to let that cash go.

What would you like to see? Are you interested in the NBA coming back and finishing the regular season? Or would you like to see them go right into some type of playoff format?

With no games being played and as of right now there are none on the schedule it’s no surprise that these leagues are trying to find a way to save money.

Major League Baseball is going to save itself a little bit of money by cutting the MLB Draft from 40 rounds to 5 rounds.

MLB an the Major League Baseball Players Association have been in discussion about shorten the draft for weeks. The MLBPA had agreed to the 5 round draft, but they where pushing for MLB to do a 10 round draft. The draft usually consists of 40 rounds, but the owners wanted to limit the number of rounds to help cut down on spending during the coronavirus shutdown.

This move will save each team a little less than $1 million dollars and apparently there are quite a few people unhappy about this move. Of course none of these people are paying the bills for these teams and with everything going on it helps each team to save where they can even if it’s looked at as a small amount by people.

While it has to be disappointing for those players who would’ve been drafted in those later rounds it might turn out to be a better situation for them.

Once a player goes undrafted he’ll be allowed to sign with any team instead of just the one team that drafted him. Now while it might not be ideal it will give that player the right to try and sign with a team where he think he fits the best. This may give those players a chance to find a team where they might develop quicker instead of being drafted by a team that might have a long term solution at the position that drafted player plays.

Please let me know how you feel about MLB making this change to the draft. Also let me know if you feel this is good or bad for those players that won’t get drafted.

You can listen to the Sports Time Radio podcast live on BlogTalkRadio.com, but if you miss the podcast live just head on over to TuneIn.com and you can listen at your leisure.

You can also look me up on Twitter @Burketime