The 2019-20 NBA season came to a screeching halt with the global outbreak of the coronavirus and the league now finds itself in unfamiliar territory.
A timetable for a resume to action still has yet to be determined. As a result, there has been plenty of speculation regarding some potential changes that could be made in an effort to bring basketball back.
There are a number of options that have been proposed to help the season continue.
According to Brian Windhorst of ESPN, the NBA is reportedly looking into three of the more notable alternatives:
The NBA could look at venues in a centralized location, perhaps playing in non-NBA cities.
Various ideas have been floated by players and executives. One is to consider using a sprawling casino property in Las Vegas, where everything could be held under one roof. Others have suggested playing in the Bahamas, where a ballroom could be converted into a playing court specifically for broadcast. There has even been talk of taking over a college campus in the Midwest, where reported cases of COVID-19 are lower for the moment.
Jared Dudley took to Twitter to confirm the reports and voice his support for the games being geld in Las Vegas:
I’ve been hearing the same thing.. If and when we as a country see significant progress with this virus the VEGAS idea seems the best.. Centralized hotels to keep all teams under one roof and a gym so you don’t even have to leave the hotel https://t.co/Mz5qmJ4yxD
— Jared Dudley (@JaredDudley619) March 27, 2020
The prospect of the Los Angeles Lakers playing the rest of their games in Sin City is certainly an intriguing one. The team is already familiar with the process after taking part in the Las Vegas Summer League every year and it is safe to say that fans would still be able to provide a bit of a homecourt advantage.
Meanwhile, the Bahamas still has yet to reach double digits in the number of reported coronavirus cases. This could perhaps provide the players with the safest option of all by getting them out of the United States where the number of cases has grown drastically.
It appears the league could also be looking to move inward to some of the flyover states that have largely been without NBA basketball in their cities. Of course, this could also prove to be counterproductive in their efforts to help contain the global pandemic by potentially bringing the disease to areas that have not yet been severely impacted.
Although the idea of playing in a makeshift arena without any fans to watch is hardly ideal, it may be a necessary course of action if the NBA hopes to finish out the season.
