NBA Players on Restart Plan: Not So Fast - The Wall Street Journal

Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving organized a Friday call for players to discuss the situation and express their reservations.

Photo: Kathy Willens/Associated Press

By

Ben Cohen

• Biography
• @bzcohen
• ben.cohen@wsj.com

June 14, 2020 9:00 am ET

The NBA’s plan to restart the season is one of the most ambitious experiments in sports. But as players get ready to move into Disney World hotels for months of games in empty arenas, they have begun to ask themselves: Do we really want to do this?

Their dissent burst into the open last week when some players said they would be willing to take a stand and sit out the season. Their concerns, which include hesitance about spending months in a restricted environment and reluctance about distracting from the Black Lives Matter movement, come less than a month before NBA teams were scheduled to arrive in Orlando, Fla.

The pushback means that three crises that have shaken the country—the pandemic, the shattered economy and the civil unrest over racial inequality—have now collided in the NBA.

The players and owners are working together to solve a problem worth billions of dollars, and unlike Major League Baseball, their negotiations produced the framework of a bold restart proposal: 22 teams entering a bubble on the Walt Disney Co. campus to save a season that has been suspended since March. The NBA’s board of governors approved the plan last week, followed by the NBA players’ association days later.

While they warned that critical details still had to be worked out, it appeared that both sides were moving in the same direction—until they weren’t.

The league was accelerating toward a July 30 return. Then some players tapped the brakes.

“We understand the players’ concerns and are working with the Players Association on finding the right balance to address them,” NBA spokesman Mike Bass said.

The consequences of not reaching a deal would be devastating for the league.

Photo: Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Kyrie Irving has emerged as the leader of the resistance. The injured Brooklyn Nets guard organized a Friday call for players to discuss the situation and express their reservations. It came one week after the union approved the broad strokes of the league’s restart plan without much objection from Irving, who sits on the NBPA’s executive committee. He appeared to change his mind when he told players that he opposed the Orlando plan and believed it could undercut the attention on racial oppression and social justice, according to ESPN and Yahoo.

That sentiment positioned Irving against his former teammate LeBron James and other influential stars on title contenders who have supported the NBA’s restart proposal. Players who are uncomfortable reporting to Disney won’t be paid for missing games, but they have been assured there won’t be long-term repercussions. NBPA executive director Michele Roberts and union president Chris Paul have said that most players are in favor of finishing the season, and people around the league expect to proceed with the Orlando proposal. But they acknowledge that plans could unravel in this convulsive moment of change across the nation.

It’s unclear what the union’s next steps will be—and how many players will share Irving’s opinion.

But it’s clear the national demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s death have become a factor in NBA players deciding how soon is too soon to resume the season. Some fear they wouldn’t be able to support the Black Lives Matter movement if they can’t join the protests against police brutality and racial inequality. Others feel that playing again would provide them with a megaphone to promote their message.

Their debate is happening in public as much as it’s unfolding in private Zoom calls. Houston Rockets guard Austin Rivers, for example, chose the Instagram comments section to respond to Irving. “We can do both. We can play and we can help change the way black lives are lived,” Rivers wrote. “But canceling or boycotting return doesn’t do that in my opinion.”

LeBron James and other influential stars on title contenders have supported the NBA’s restart proposal.

Photo: Mike Stobe/Getty Images

The consequences of not reaching a deal would be devastating. The players would lose more than $1 billion and power as the owners shred the collective bargaining agreement. The league would lose even more revenue as it was already bracing for the financial blows from the extended shutdown and its showdown with China. The fans would lose months of basketball in a time of societal upheaval.

While players naturally have concerns about the basics of the NBA’s plan, from the health and safety protocols to the stress of being away from their families for months, they are more troubled by the economic implications of ending the season and entering a labor war.

Then, of course, there is the pandemic. The world has a better understanding of this disruptive pathogen than it did when the NBA stopped on March 11, but Central Florida reporting a sharp uptick in cases last week was a reminder that the virus hasn’t changed, even if human behavior has. The players find themselves in a state of uncertainty, just like the rest of us, trying to answer the question of when they feel safe coming back to work.

These forces of money, health and race have converged over the past two weeks to make NBA players grapple with their individual decisions.

“I think guys are gathering to really talk about and dive deep into the idea of not playing,” Indiana Pacers guard Malcolm Brogdon told New Orleans Pelicans guard JJ Redick on his Ringer podcast.

Brogdon added: “It depends on your perspective. Some guys are going to say, ‘For health reasons, like Covid and the long-term effects that we don’t understand about Covid, I want to sit out.’ Other guys are going to say, ‘The black community and my people are going through too much for me to basically be distracted with basketball…Another group of guys are going to say, ‘No, this is the most amount of money I’m going to make in my lifetime. It doesn’t make sense to hand this money back. I can do so much good in my community if I have this money.’ ”

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Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com

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