WHY THE NBA’S FLORIDA RE-START IS TOO BIG TO FAIL

@Baldwin31

Guess what, the NBA is pushing to comeback whether you, your favourite team’s beat writer or some national media member want. This is happening.

As players like Nikola Jokic test positive before even entering into the bubble, people are panicking and saying it’s time to give up and cancel the season. Here’s the thing, the very fabric of the NBA we know rides on this season happening.

If the league did in fact cancel it’s season, it would lose BILLIONS of dollars. Not millions with an ‘m’, BILLIONS with a ‘B’.

Adam Silver said it best early on, the league isn’t built to sustain a pandemic. The collective bargaining agreement between the players and owners would have to be ripped up and re-done.

If that doomsday situation happened guess who has all the leverage? The guys that always do: the owners. In that scenario, the players would get royally screwed in a revamped NBA that would probably see them lose in 60-70% of what they care about.

Salaries across the board would go down, maybe a hard salary cap, who really knows. Let’s be honest, it’s not like there’s precedent for this.

What we do know is the NBA would look completely different and it would benefit the owners above all else. That’s the first and most obvious reason the players are coming back.

As always in life, this deal is about the money whether you like it or not.

Secondly, the reason they’re coming back is because shocking to some, they love what they do. This isn’t the pet project millions want to pretend they’re invested in on Instagram.

NBA players love to hoop and want to be able to return to some state of normalcy.

Outside of the people on social media who seem to be cheering for life to never revert back to normal, who can’t respect someone wanting life to get back to well, life.

We spend so much time talking about the mental health of players and how to improve it. Well, maybe hooping is something they need to be themselves and feel at peace.

Before someone gets onto their high horse and starts yelling “BUT WILL, WHAT ABOUT THE VIRUS AND THEM BEING AT RISK,” let’s look at this calmly for a second. I know for some reason people are cheering for life to be sitting at home counting the seconds until a vaccine comes right now, but that isn’t a realistic option.

Even if the NBA were to say cancel the season in the dream world of the paranoid, who’s to say we aren’t in the middle of a second wave in November. Then if that happens we push it back again and then really we get to the route of their argument which is simple: cancel all sports until there’s a vaccine.

Here’s why the idea of cancelling life until there’s a vaccine is presently illogical and insane.

1. There’s no guarantee of a vaccine any time soon (or ever). Until one is created, most high level doctors offer up the possibility one may never happen so in essence, we could be waiting forever.
2. The English Premier League, Serie A, La Liga and Bundesliga, the biggest soccer leagues in England, Italy, Spain and Germany are all off and running. In the cases of England, Italy and Spain, their outbreaks were at the very least on par if not worse than North America yet somehow they can figure out sports and we can’t?

Guess what people, sometimes there’s risks in life.

Many of the greatest moments and discoveries in human history had a risk involved going in. In order for humans to accomplish something great, it’s rare that there was not a negative possible end result.

Could this fail dramatically and have an entire team get the virus? I guess, it seems unlikely based on how it has been passed through teams that have had positive tests but even still, you have to at least try.

There’s way too much at stake here to just sit at home and wait for something that may never come. What if in five years there’s no vaccine and April is run for the corona cure month and players are wearing orange to support. You’re telling me that isn’t a possible outcome?

Why do so many people just want life to stop? Are you really that petrified of potential failure to not even try to succeed?

Professional athletes are in far and away the safest demographic for the virus. Do you really honestly think if they were at risk of death the NBA would go through with this and immunologists would approve the plan?

It’s time we as sports fans actually understand why this is happening. Players are going to test positive, they’re out and about in reopened cities like the rest of us. The ironic thing about the people panicking about each positive test is the safest thing for them is finding out they have it and then being in and around the team that has unlimited resources to help get them better.

You notice how none of the players who tested positive back in March are out in the forefront against basketball coming back? These aren’t your 95 year old grandma in a nursing home, it’s a series of young men at the peak of human health.

Our biggest problem today is we worry about things just for the sake of worrying. If the players are on board, doctors okay it and the league pushes through, who are you to say this is a bad idea?

The NBA is coming back next month whether you like it or not and guess what, it should.