The NBA has not yet made a final decision on whether to resume the 2019-20 season, but the last 24 hours have given fans some optimism that a return to action could happen.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported Tuesday night that the league's board of governors and NBA commissioner Adam Silver had a productive call. Following the call, according to Wojnarowski, the people involved felt "increasingly positive about the league's momentum toward a resumption of play this season."
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Chris Haynes of Yahoo! Sports also reported Tuesday a group of eight superstar players, including LeBron James and NBPA president Chris Paul, had a "private conference call on Monday and established (a) united front in favor of resuming season."
One of the NBPA vice presidents is Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown. He did an interview Wednesday on CNN and discussed how the players are feeling about returning to game action.
"A lot of the guys want to play," Brown said. "I think the most influential players that were on that call that we speak of, a lot of those guys want to continue the season and that's very important to us. But we've also got to get with some of the other guys that also make up this league and see how they feel. Everything is moving in the (right direction). ... We (just) don't want to come back too early and make people feel like things are OK and things are not and (are) potentially dangerous."
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Plenty of decisions still need to be made before the league is able to return. One of them is where to play the games. Some states might not allow sporting events to happen for quite a while, so it could make sense to have the entire league compete in one location.
Another decision the league must make, if it returns, is whether to continue the regular season or go straight to the playoffs. Most teams have played around 65 of the 82 regular season games originally scheduled. Brown and the Celtics aren't in danger of missing the playoffs and currently occupy the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race. If the playoffs started today, the C's would meet the rival Philadelphia 76ers in the first round.
Based on recent reports, as well as comments from players, it sounds like both sides are hoping to finish the season. The challenge is doing that in a way that's as safe as possible.