Former NBA forward Sam Dekker is headed home after the Russia VTB United League cancelled its season, he tweets. Dekker, who left Moscow on Thursday with a connecting flight in Turkey, was playing for Lokomotiv Kuban. Dekker played for Washington and Cleveland last season.
We have more international news:
- The Japanese B League has decided to cancel the remainder of its season, Jonathan Givony of ESPN reports. The league went on hiatus after the COVID-19 outbreak in mid-February and briefly resumed play for one weekend this month. “We’ve prioritized the mental and physical health of our players, coaches and club officials,” league chairman Masaaki Okawa said in a video statement. “The spread of this coronavirus has been beyond our imagination and we’ve emphasized that we cannot afford to expose our players and others who are associated with our league to the danger.”
- China is closing its borders to foreigners starting on Saturday, according to NPR.org post, and that could impact players returning to the Chinese Basketball Association. The CBA is planning to resume its season next month and foreign players that have already returned were required to quarantine for two weeks. However, not all foreign players have made it back to China.
- The NBA is closely monitoring China’s efforts to resume play with an eye toward replicating those measures if the CBA is successful, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN. While the CBA hasn’t formally announced a plan, it’s expected to cluster teams in one or two cities and play a round-robin format in empty arenas over several weeks. The CBA’s goal is to play out the remaining schedule in full before moving on to the playoffs. The NBA could look at venues in a centralized location, including Las Vegas.
If the teams all play in just 1 city, 2 arenas, they could play 8-10 games a day, & each team could play 5-6 games a week as there would not be any traveling involved, no practices or anything but just pure basketball! I would love for that to happen!