The NBA has pushed back its original plan to allow players to re-enter team facilities for voluntary workouts by a week until May 8.
The league had been planning to re-open facilities beginning on Friday, including Georgia, which had been among the first states to loosen stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Before the NBA’s announcement on Monday, the Hawks had decided to wait until they had a better sense of how the loosening of those stay-at-open measures were impacting the region.
“We are going to wait and see what happens in the state over the couple weeks,” Hawks president of basketball operations and general manager Travis Schlenk told ESPN. “If there’s a positive response, we’ll slowly open up. If it’s a negative response, we’ll make sure our staff and players remain healthy.”
ESPN obtained a 16-page league memo on Monday that detailed to teams the requirements of the facilities re-opening, including allowing only four players in a facility at any one time, and only one staff member supervising. No coaches are allowed in the workouts with players, the memo said. A distance of 12 feet must be kept among individuals on the court.
The NBA also told teams that there would be a process put in place to help teams in closed states find options to get back on the floor on this limited basis, the memo said.
The NBA shared the broad strokes of a May 1 opening in a memo distributed to a limited group of owners on a league sub-committee on Saturday, although most front office executives were unaware of the league’s plan until an ESPN report later that afternoon. Across Saturday night and Sunday, general managers made calls to the league office and front office peers to try and get a fuller understanding of the league’s plans.
Among a dozen GMs reached by ESPN, most had apprehensions about bringing back players into facilities in regions where politics seemed to be driving the re-opening of businesses — not science and medical expertise.
“There has been a concern that players could start flocking to states that are re-opening,” one team president told ESPN on Sunday.
With nearly a third of the league’s teams across several states possibly poised to re-open based upon the loosening of governmental stay-at-home regulations in coming weeks, a significant number of top team executives are privately expressing concerns about the idea. Still, there were several organizations that believed the timing was appropriate to allow players back into a controlled environment under team supervision, where local governments allowed the facilities to open.
Some executives believe that players would inevitably start to move toward unsanctioned use of public gymnasiums, and that could create a greater health concern for players.
As players started to call teams on Saturday and Sunday searching for direction on when and where they can possibly return to individual workouts, organizations in restrictive stay-at-home markets remain unsure on how to proceed.
Some owners were told on Saturday that the NBA would work with those teams — including in places like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Detroit — to find alternatives for training should their players want to do so, which turned out to be the case in Monday’s memo.
Some teams did worry about the competitive advantage of players getting a significant jump on training in the event of the season’s resumption; others worry about the wisdom and safety of essentially encouraging players to travel out-of-market to find gymnasiums or team facilities that can accommodate them.
Georgia has been the first to open up public gymnasiums — such as 24-Hour Fitness and Equinox clubs — and some team executives on a GM conference call with the league office Thursday shared that they had players asking if they should consider flying to Georgia, sources said. A couple of executives suggested that players had wondered to them whether they should find a way to get into a gym to play basketball again, including if there was a way to access the Hawks team facility itself, sources said.
Players have been prohibited by the NBA from using public gymnasiums or training facilities during the league’s shutdown.
Many players have left the markets where their teams play during the shutdown, and it’s expected that organizations with open facilities could be asked to let opposing players living locally use their gym on a limited basis.
The NBA’s decision to re-open facilities based on the loosening of local governmental policies isn’t considered reflective of a new timetable for a resumption of play this season, sources said. Commissioner Adam Silver and owners still believe they need more time to gain a clearer picture on whether, when or how they could possibly resume the season, sources said.
