In the wake of a report earlier in the week suggesting that there’s “overwhelming” support among NBA players to try to resume the 2019/20 season, NBPA president Chris Paul appeared today on ESPN’s The Jump (video link) and essentially confirmed as much to Rachel Nichols.
Acknowledging that there are complicated issues to work through, and stressing that the health and safety of players should be the NBA’s top priority, Paul stated in no uncertain terms that players are itching to get back on the court.
“A lot of hard conversations that have to be made, a lot of hard decisions,” the Thunder guard said. “But with the team around us, I think ultimately we’ll get to where we want to. Obviously we want to play. Oh man, we want to play. We want to play bad. And I think that’s a consensus for the guys around the league. We want it to be, obviously, as safe as possible. But the biggest thing is we miss the game.”
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Noting that the common refrain among players is that they want to play “when it’s safe,” Nichols asked Paul what exactly that might look like, since no coronavirus vaccine is expected until 2021 at the earliest. The 35-year-old admitted he’s still not sure exactly what the best way to minimize the risk this summer is.
“I don’t have the answers,” Paul said. “I don’t have all the answers. But I know that people are working tirelessly trying to figure it out.”
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski wrote earlier this week that if the NBA resumes its season, the league won’t want to let one positive coronavirus test shut down play again. That means players will have to be comfortable with some number of positive tests, though it’s not clear how many would qualify as too many — that figures to be one key issue the NBA and NBPA will have to figure out in their negotiations.
If they are playing start with only the Playoffs. My Knicks were done since last October.
With only a few exceptions, the Minnesota Timberpuppies have been “Playing Bad” since the team’s inception in 1989.
CP3 could improve his grammar. “We want to play poorly.” sets a better example to all the kids watching.
The star players seem like they’re speaking for everyone else without taking in their opinion. The meeting they had was composed of 8 all stars and nobody else not buying they all want to come back as bad as the starts who are losing over 5 million from the season not being resumed
The stars can afford to live without that money a lot more than the others…
The idea that positive-testers can still play can wait to be shot down at the last minute, to get everyone on board. Well I assume that’s what they’re doing. No way can spreaders play! Q up until it passes.