Should the NBA halt the season?

This Sunday the league postponed five games, the most for a single day since the season began and since March of last year when it halted the campaign and then resumed it in the Florida bubble.

Positive cases are reported by the minute and there are more than 60 players entering the COVID protocol as of this Sunday in the month of December alone. The Nets have all of their starters out and that’s eight players total, the Cavs seven, the Lakers six and coach Vogel, as of this writing. But the trend is accentuating and it’s clear that this week will see an uptick.

Now, let’s give it some perspective , the NHL has suspended games that involve crossing the border into Canada until after the Christmas break (this Monday through Thursday) and the NBA faces a similar scenario with games in Toronto. The NHL has postponed 27 games over the past few days because of the new outbreak and it is highly likely that league players will not attend the Winter Olympics that kick off Feb. 4 in Beijing.

The NBA remains determined to minimize the number of postponed games and to avoid a lull. Due to the above, this Sunday night the Players Association and the league signed an agreement so that for each roster player who enters the health protocol, teams can sign a substitute. In addition, these signings will not impact the salary cap or the teams’ luxury tax.

Players on two-way contracts who also play in the developmental league had a maximum of 50 NBA games per season, that limit will no longer apply and they will be able to play as many times as necessary.

What is the message behind all this? It is not in the plan to stop the machine, the show must go on and we will take extreme measures in the face of scenarios of the same nature.

But let’s think about this, the product is different, it’s not the same paying to see Kevin Durant as it is paying to see David Duke a rookie who has only played the last five games because Steve Nash had no one else to line up. The Nets have had games with only eight bodies available. It’s not the same to pay sponsorships and TV rights to watch a generic product that doesn’t produce the same levels of viewership and therefore marketability.

The intention of not stopping competition is good, but at what cost? At the end of the day there will be some games that will look more like a developmental league game than the NBA itself.

The league has just around the corner the most important day of the regular season, the Christmas games, games scheduled with every intention of generating the highest ratings and marketing by scheduling the most attractive rivalries and pitting the star players against each other. Today, Durant, Harden, Giannis and Trae Young, among others, are out for the day.

The most anticipated event of the regular season could be a scrimmage of substitutes from both teams, hopefully not, but it could be.

It is like staging a Broadway play with understudies, or pretending to fill movie theaters with movies that promised The Rock or Will Smith and taking their place young promising young players in training. The spirit is plausible, the result will hardly be.