New plan: play the games in China.
Shaquille O’Neal says he’s heard NBA team might move to Las Vegas | Las Vegas Review-Journal
“I heard through the grapevine that there are a couple teams for sale and one may be going to Vegas,” O’Neal said on “The Big Podcast With Shaq.”
He didn’t specify which teams would be in the market, but the most commonly mentioned ones regarding relocation are the New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies and Charlotte Hornets. Though there are no imminent signs of the Pelicans or Hornets changing addresses, Memphis owner Robert Pera looked into selling the Grizzlies in August, according to a tweet from former longtime team beat writer Ronald Tillery.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the Review-Journal in July that relocation wasn’t under consideration. But the NBA has had a long, successful run in Las Vegas with its Summer League, which has caused many in and around the league to speculate that moving a team here would make sense.
“While we, of course, don’t have an NBA team in Las Vegas, this seems like the next best thing,” Silver said at the time of the Summer League. “For roughly two weeks of the calendar in July, enormous attention is on the NBA.”
Many N.B.A. Stars Lack Home Court Advantage: Basketball Hoops – The New York Times
The league has forbidden players from playing basketball anywhere but at their homes since March 19. That directive was reiterated to teams in a confidential April 27 memorandum obtained by The Times, which said that players were to avoid public health clubs, fitness centers, gyms, college facilities or “the like.”
Yet one Western Conference player, who requested anonymity, said he was aware of some fellow players who had ignored league and government directives, arranging secret shooting sessions in unauthorized gyms.
League rules also prohibit teams from purchasing home baskets for their players, which moved Butler to alleviate that issue for the Heat. Home kits, though, come with their own complications: Gabe Vincent and Kyle Alexander, Miami’s two players on two-way contracts, both live in a hotel and had nowhere to unbox Butler’s present.
Then there’s an assembly issue. Leonard, who described himself as adept with tools, said it took six hours without the proper wrenches and with the limited equipment at his disposal.
“Ever try putting together an Ikea dresser?” Leonard said. “This hoop was like putting together three of them.”
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has access inside the NBA’s discussions to plan, but he, too, is waiting for answers.
Specifically, from scientists.
“We listen to health experts not politicians,” Cuban wrote Monday in an email to The Dallas Morning News. “When the NBA provides us with confirmation that it’s safe for our guys to move forward we will move forward.”
Since the NBA suspended the season starting March 12, Cuban has changed his initially optimistic timeline.
Soon after the decision, which came during the third quarter of Mavericks-Nuggets on March 12 and prompted a visibly surprised reaction from Cuban, the Mavericks’ owner said he hoped the league would begin “to get back to normal” in mid-May.
“That obviously is not going to happen,” Cuban wrote.
Cuban has tempered hopes for what a potential re-opening of some practice facilities could mean.
The NBA’s purpose for modifying closures “is to allow for safe and controlled environments for players to train in states that allow them to do so,” the league said in a statement.
That Texas Gov. Greg Abbott allowed the state’s stay-at-home order to expire May 1 means the Mavericks could be one franchise to follow the NBA’s new guidelines.
The NBA will allow for no more than four players permitted at a facility at one time, no head or assistant coach participation, no group activity, including practices of scrimmages, and no player use of non-team, public facilities.
Cuban didn’t commit to the Mavericks’ expanding their facility use or to his thoughts on whether the NBA will find a solution to resume the current season, one in which the Mavericks were on pace to earn their first playoff berth since 2016.
“It’s safety first. Nothing else matters,” he wrote. “Once the science is there we all will know it exists and we all will be excited about life moving forward.”
Roundtable: Shams, Rosenthal, LeBrun share the latest on leagues returning – The Athletic
Charania: Well, the plans do seem to be a little clearer. The top two locations for a return to play, 30-40 essential people per team and players’ close family members: Disney World in Orlando and Las Vegas.
How would that look? I’m told preliminary plans have consisted around a two-week quarantine period in which everyone there is tested; once those two weeks end, retest and allow the players who remain as negative tests to start a 14-day training camp. It will require the necessary amount of tests — rapid ones, at that — and agreements with the league and its players association. A White House official told me that the government will help the NBA and any league that is looking to return to play.
The 16-page memo the NBA sent to teams regarding the reopening of certain facilities starting May 8 is the baseline for the protocols of testing, disinfecting, physical distancing, and more. Further guidelines would need to be made for the start of games, however. Will the NBA be able to salvage any regular-season games? Will it return straight into the playoffs, with a play-in tournament for the 7 to 10 seeds in the standings? What would happen if the players returned and someone tested positive for coronavirus again?
Either way, the NBA is planning for many scenarios — including targeting a Christmas Day start to the 2020-21 season, sources tell me.
Nets' Joe Tsai: It's obvious who wants NBA season restarted
Which of the 30 teams are the most eager? The most hesitant? No need to look past the frozen standings.
“If you look at the Los Angeles Lakers or Milwaukee Bucks, they are in first place when the season got suspended,” Tsai said last week to a virtual classroom of students at Stanford, where his daughter is a junior.
“There is a chance for them to go to the championship. Of course they want to play. If you are in 28th place, maybe this season isn’t that important. There is a difference in opinion among the owners, as well.”
Playing meaningless games in empty arenas and losing revenue is not going to entice teams in line for the NBA Draft lottery — perhaps even those at the bottom of the playoff picture — to salvage the season.
Tsai said NBA commissioner Adam Silver is primarily focused on safety.
“I think Adam has said, ‘We are not looking at a date.’ Setting a target date doesn’t make any sense,” Tsai said. “Let’s look at the data. I think one of the most important things is, to Dr. [Anthony] Fauci’s point, you have to have enough tests.
“One of the most pernicious things about COVID-19 is you can be asymptomatic and be infectious, so you can infect other people while you look perfectly healthy. That’s a big problem. Without tests to identify those that are contagious, and then we try to isolate them, it’s really very difficult to restart and keep everybody safe and healthy.”
Steph Curry the first of thousands? The optics of NBA’s coronavirus testing – SFChronicle.com
Before the NBA told franchises in a memo Thursday not to arrange coronavirus tests for asymptomatic players and staff, at least eight entire teams had been tested. Fourteen players, including Nets forward and ex-Warrior Kevin Durant, tested positive.
Shortly after news broke in March that four Brooklyn players had tested positive for the coronavirus, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted, “With all due respect, an entire NBA team should NOT get tested for COVID-19 while there are critically ill patients waiting to be tested.”
This raised questions about the league’s plans to try finishing the season. Per ESPN, the NBA expects to need roughly 15,000 tests — enough for every person associated with all 30 teams — to resume play.
It’s difficult to envision that, within the next couple of months, the U.S. will have enough kits to justify testing that many asymptomatic people. Even if the NBA can acquire the necessary number of tests to complete the season, it would risk a public-relations problem.
“Of course, there will always be people who say, ‘Everyone who needs a test should get a test,’” said Dr. Cyrus Shahpar, an Alameda resident who is the director of the New York-based Prevent Epidemics Team at the global public health initiative Resolve to Save Lives. “That’s not very specific. It’s definitely improving, but we still have room to grow there. It could be a while before we get where we want to be.”
Ranking the top 74 individual seasons in NBA history
63. Kawhi Leonard
2018-19 Toronto Raptors
Regular season: 26.6 PPG, 7.3 RPG | Playoffs: 30.5 PPG, 9.1 RPG
Leonard led the Raptors to their first title in his only Toronto season, along the way hitting one of the most incredible shots in league history. — Bontemps
Let’s Remember Some Toronto Raptors: Jumping Jamario Moon – Raptors HQ
His Raptors Run
In truth, Moon’s run in Toronto, as with many players on the Raptors in those Bryan Colangelo-led years, was brief. He played two full season on the Raptors, starting 135 out of the 158 games in which he appeared. Then, in 2009, after another 54 games with the Raptors (including 39 starts), Moon was traded at the deadline — along with Jermaine O’Neal and the first round pick that would become Jonas Valanciunas (but was first traded back to Toronto as part of the Chris Bosh sign-and-trade) — to the Heat for Shawn Marion.This should have been a boon for the Raptors — Marion was still decent, O’Neal was a corpse — but Colangelo quickly flipped the playeer they called The Matrix for the aforementioned Hedo that offseason in a massive four-team deal, restarting their search for a steady small forward once again after it became immediately apparent that Turkoglu, for lack of a more polite word, sucked.
Still, Jamario! Blessed with a jumping ability that allowed him to leap over his namesake, Moon quickly became something of a fan favourite in Toronto. It also didn’t hurt that in his rookie year, he posted 8.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game while shooting 48.5 percent from the field and a reasonable 32 percent from three. Plus, there were the dunks. Moon’s late appearance in the NBA, at 27, made sense when you looked at his actual shooting ability, his defensive acumen, his awareness, and other factors. But you could not say that Moon couldn’t dunk. (We’ll get to some highlights in a minute.)
What would a Raptors 'Last Dance' look like?
Question 1: How did the Raptors get Kawhi?
I think the first question I’d want answered is what the heck happened in San Antonio that allowed Toronto to trade for Leonard.
We know Leonard was frustrated with his leg injury, the way the Spurs diagnosed it, treated it, and then set a timetable for his return, but still, what happened there? What did the Spurs doctors say? What did Leonard’s own doctors say? How did one of the best organizations in the NBA let Kawhi Leonard walk out the door for DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a protected first-round pick?
Question 2: How mad was Kawhi about being traded to Toronto?
Immediately following the Raptors trade on July 18, 2018, there were a set of reports suggesting Leonard was not going to come to Toronto.
Yahoo’s Chris Haynes, who is well connected with Leonard’s group, said Leonard had “no desire to play in Toronto.”
In the offseason, Siakam needs to keep working on the same areas of his game he focused on last summer: his handle, his off-the-dribble jumper and his playmaking. If the playoffs started tomorrow, I wouldn’t want to see many of those Dirk shots, nor would I want him to regularly stray from the Raptors’ system and do a Leonard impression against a set defense. (It is not an accident that Toronto’s offense was terrible late in the shot clock.)
The question is what Siakam will be able to do a year from now and beyond. Toronto used this season to get him reps as the No. 1 guy, and next season should be about either getting better at the aforementioned superstar stuff or doing less of it. He needs to clean up some of his defensive mistakes, too — he was noticeably less consistent on that end in 2019-20.
Siakam turned 26 last month. While you typically wouldn’t expect significant strides from a player his age, there is nothing typical about his story. Siakam’s career has been defined by extraordinary improvement, and, in his own words, he is “obsessed with development.” This would be a strange time to start betting against him.
Sixers’ series with Raptors actually slipped away in Game 4 | Off the Dribble
They’ll tell you that the Sixers’ 2019 NBA championship aspirations ended on Kawhi Leonard’s 15-foot fadeaway jumper at the buzzer to lift the Toronto Raptors to a 92-90 victory in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series May 12 at the Scotiabank Arena.
They’re technically right.
But Tuesday is the one-year anniversary of when the series actually changed for the Sixers.
Philly had a 2-1 series advantage heading into the 3:30 p.m. Game 4 contest at the Wells Fargo Center. The Sixers went on to lose, 101-96. They blew a golden opportunity to put the Raptors on their heels by taking a commanding 3-1 lead.
Leonard was his usual dominating self, finishing with 39 points, 14 rebounds, and 5 assists in Game 4. He scored 45, 35, 33, and 39 points in the first four games of the series.
But the biggest memory from that game was Joel Embiid’s performance. The Sixers big man was sick following a night at a concert. The three-time All-Star center finished with 11 points on 2-for-7 shooting. He did have eight rebounds, seven assists, two steals, two blocks, and went 7-for-10 from the foul line. But Embiid missed three consecutive free throws during a critical stretch of the fourth quarter.
All this came after Embiid texted coach Brett Brown at 6:20 a.m. that day to say, according to Brown, “he really never felt this poorly and he was unsure, coach, if I’m going to play.”
“I didn’t have a good night,” Embiid said after the game. “Didn’t sleep. Was throwing up. I needed an IV at 6 in the morning. I tried to play and tried to get the win. Obviously, it wasn’t enough.”
Embiid said he had a cold, a headache, and felt bad “everywhere,” but he didn’t want to use what ailed him as an excuse.
Raptors Uprising GC Announce First Six Weeks of NBA 2K League Season 3 – Raptors Uprising
The NBA 2K League announced today their schedule through Week 6 of the 2020 season. Refueled and retooled, Toronto’s Raptors Uprising GC will open Season 3 with a marquee matchup against defending finalists 76ers GC on Tuesday, May 5 with tipoff set for 7 p.m. ET.
Toronto will then quickly turn its attention to 2020 first-overall pick JBM and his Wizards District Gaming team on May 6 to round out the opening week.
As announced earlier, league teams will participate in regular-season gameplay remotely for the first six weeks from their local markets with games broadcasted live on the NBA 2K League’s Twitch and YouTube channels. Games will begin at 7 p.m. ET every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with four distinct matchups each night.
