Coronavirus Pandemic Likely To Wreak Havoc On The 2020 NBA Offseason

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold across the United States and around the world, the NBA must begin to make contingency plans.

At this point, it’s unclear when—or if—the 2019-20 NBA season will resume. Detroit Pistons forward Christian Wood is now the third NBA player to test positive for the coronavirus, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, joining Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert and guard Donovan Mitchell.

The league suspended play Wednesday only minutes after Charania first reported news of Gobert’s positive test. During an appearance on TNT’s Inside the NBA the following night, commissioner Adam Silver said the league would “most likely” be suspended “at least 30 days,” although he added that “we don’t know enough to be more specific than that.”

That uncertainty threatens not only the remainder of the 2019-20 season—Silver said “it’s possible” that the season will eventually get outright canceled—but the ensuing offseason as well.

The schedule

The NBA first must decide how to proceed with the 2019-20 (if at all) before focusing on the remainder of the offseason.

On Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the cancellation or postponement of events with more than 50 people for the next eight weeks. Shortly thereafter, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that “a number of NBA owners and executives increasingly believe a best-case scenario is a mid-to-late June return to play—with no fans.”

However, “fears exist of a season completely lost, especially based on the slow response of the United States to flatten the curve of the coronavirus and make testing available on a widespread basis,” Wojnarowski added.

If the CDC’s guidance remains in place beyond mid-May, Sam Vecenie of The Athletic noted why it might be impossible for the NBA to stage games with fewer than 50 people.

In the meantime, the NBA must also decide how to determine when (or if) it’s safe to resume the season. The first step would likely involve getting all players, coaches and essential personnel tested for the coronavirus.

“The league likely won’t consider re-opening its doors to players, let alone fans, until a 14-day period following the last positive test,” Yahoo Sports’ Vincent Goodwill reported Thursday.

The playoffs were originally scheduled to begin on Saturday, April 18. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the NBA won’t be able to proceed as expected over the next few months, though. Would it cancel the remainder of the regular season and skip straight to the playoffs? Would we get a shortened playoffs (best-of-three or best-of-five in early rounds instead of best-of-seven throughout)?

For now, the NBA has “extended its ban on team practices indefinitely,” according to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, although “players are still able to work out individually at team facilities.” Players may need time to work their way into game shape, which further complicates any scheduling decisions.

According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst (via RealGM), the NBA would “love … to get to 70 games” to meet what’s promised to regional sports networks. Every team has played at least 63 games, so an abbreviated regular season—allowing playoff teams to work back into shape will preserving local TV revenue—seems like the NBA’s best-case scenario at the moment.

The draft

After deciding when (or if) to resume the season, the NBA must turn its attention to the 2020 draft.

The NBA draft lottery was originally set to take place on May 19 in Chicago, and the NBA draft combine was scheduled for May 21-24 in Chicago. But if the league does decide to resume the regular season at some point rather than skipping straight to the playoffs, it can’t conduct the lottery until the regular season wraps up.

Holding the lottery remotely wouldn’t be a huge disruption. The NBA also could modify its plans for holding an in-person draft, much like the NFL has. However, draft prospects face unprecedented uncertainty between now and then.

The NCAA’s decision to cancel March Madness wiped out an opportunity for prospects to improve their draft stock with a deep run through the tournament. If the NBA follows the NFL’s lead and prohibits pre-draft visits to team facilities until the coronavirus pandemic subsides, prospects may not be able to work out for teams either in a group setting (at the combine) or individually.

As Wojnarowski noted Tuesday, that could weigh into prospects’ decision whether to declare for the draft at all:

“NBA executives widely agree that the pre-draft process will be severely limited, if not lost altogether, as the prospect of having athletes or scouts board commercial flights anytime in the near future for individual workouts, pro days or a league-wide combine appears extremely unlikely,” Wojnarowski and ESPN’s Jonathan Givony reported. “That will make gathering feedback and assessing a player’s standing in the eyes of NBA teams extremely challenging in this environment.”

As a result, the NBA sent a memo to NCAA coaches Tuesday “informing them that the league is accepting applications to the Undergraduate Advisory Committee, which provides feedback to players on potential draft stock,” Wojnarowski and Givony reported. NBA executives would then relay to prospects whether they’re expected to be lottery picks, first-rounders, second-rounders or likely to go undrafted, which could help inform their decision of whether to declare for the draft or return to college.

Free agency

While figuring how to proceed with the remainder of the 2019-20 season and the 2020 draft, the NBA must also start planning for the offseason.

The league bases its salary cap upon the projected amount of basketball related income for the upcoming season, which includes things such as gate receipts and broadcast rights. Salary-cap expert Larry Coon told Henry Bushnell of Yahoo Sports that the NBA normally uses the previous season’s BRI as a baseline for the following season’s cap, but the coronavirus shutdown complicates that.

According to John Hollinger and Danny Leroux of The Athletic, “league sources peg the average gate for an NBA team at just a shade under $2 [million] per home game.” If the NBA scraps the remainder of the regular season and jumps straight to the playoffs—or plays games without fans—that could wipe out more than $500 million in revenue, which “could theoretically drop next year’s cap” by $8 million, per Hollinger and Leroux.

Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher reported “a drop of $10 million to $15 million is not outside the realm of possibility,” particular if the league must cancel the playoffs as well.

“The NBA likely will provide projections on three primary scenarios: the financial costs of shutting down the season, restarting with no fans in the arena, or playing playoff games with fans,” according to Wojnarowski. “Those losses will be reflected in next season’s salary cap and the players’ share of basketball-related income.”

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association can collectively bargain the salary-cap amount, which could effectively be an inverse of the cap-smoothing proposal the union rejected in 2015. Rather than enduring a steep one-year cap downturn in 2020-21 before returning to some semblance of normalcy in 2021-22 and beyond, the two sides could decide to not base the 2020-21 cap amount off the 2019-20 BRI.

Much like the rest of the world, the NBA is in uncharted territory at the moment. In the weeks to come, it will have to decide how to proceed with the remainder of the 2019-20 season, the 2020 draft and the 2020-21 salary cap.

Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Early Bird Rights.