By James Ciambor
The NBA had to discontinue their regular season due to Covid-19 concerns. But this week it has been announced that the season will finish at the ESPN complex in Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. This news isn’t really surprising, considering that Disney is the parent company to ESPN and has had a continuous and profitable relationship with the NBA. Considering that Disney’s stock price has taken a dip due to the recent Covid-19 outbreak, having all the NBA teams finish the season at the ESPN complex facilities may be the very thing Disney needs to turn things around economically.
Other sports leagues are in negotiations to restart but its not certain what will happen to them as of yet. The NHL has some plans to restart hockey with playoffs, but negotiations with arenas and players continue. Major league baseball is in a dispute with players over the restart. As of now, the 2020 NFL season will commence but perhaps without fans or even with a delay into October.
But getting over 30 NBA teams to play at the ESPN complex might be a difficult undertaking as well. This has never been done before and a situation like this is obviously quite chaotic. Trying to have the league's 30 teams all contained and kept in one facility is tough to imagine. It's also tough to imagine all of the players, officials and team personnel in a quarantined zone for an extended period. Some of these personalities just can't be contained, pandemic or no pandemic.
The circumstances surrounding this are rare but critics and fans wonder if this is a tenable solution. Even if successful, this season will always have an asterisk next to the eventual champion team's name in the record books.
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