NBA: The dilemma of Luka Doncic and the NBA Europeans: the league is coming back, but they, for the moment, are not | NBA 2019

Updated

Saturday,
9
may
2020

20:55

The Mavericks point guard traveled to Slovenia on a private plane in early April after Rudy Gobert tested positive and is still there.

Luka Doncic, during a game with the Mavericks.
REUTERS.

The NBA Prepare now for the return of the competition. But 'prepare' doesn't mean the league is about to start. Not much less.

Adam Silver, Commissioner of the competition, has maintained this weekend a meeting with the representatives of the players to explain how and when the return to normality will begin in the best basketball league in the world. All this being clear that the situation depends exclusively on the evolution of the epidemic of the Covid-19, for which tens of thousands of people have died in the United States.

On Friday, the Portland Trail-Blazers and the Cleveland Cavaliers They opened their facilities so that their staff could once again feel what it was like to shoot for the basket. “It is strange,” he acknowledged. Kevin Love, star of the Ohio franchise, who has been able to train because in the State the situation is better than in others and public officials have authorized its operation. Not so in others where there are also league teams.

For this reason, because in such a long country it is impossible to live the same situation towards the epidemic in the West as in the East, in the North as in the South, Adam Silver considers as the main option to play in Las Vegas and / or Florida during the first weeks of that long-awaited return to competition. Midwest and Pacific Rim teams will play the game city, while Celtics, Bulls, Knicks, Heat, Sixers And the company will do it in Orlando, with Disney offering their Disneyworld facilities, for example.

In no rush to return

But that process is not easy. Beyond the circumstances of the pandemic itself, its evolution, the number of infections and the number of deaths per state, it is necessary to take into account the specific cases of the players. And many are in no rush to return, especially veterans. According to information from 'ESPNThis was one of the central themes of the conversation between Silver and the players: their fears and the security measures that will be taken.

Several franchises have already announced that they will carry out massive tests on their staff and members of their organization, but the question goes further: “Many guys think it's not safe“A player from one team comments to ESPN, explaining that there are many players who have moved to their home state. Or even to their country of birth, as is the case of Luka Doncic.

Flying despite restrictions

The former Real Madrid player traveled to Slovenia on a private plane in early April, after Rudy Gobert's positive test and the NBA's decision to stop the competition, and still there. Despite the area restrictions in the United States, the Mavericks, with their millionaire owner Mark Cuban at the helm, will be able to get their star back as soon as they want, but in the words of one agent to ESPN: “Players will only return to the country when they see that the league is really close to returning.

And it is that in case of returning, Doncic, that he will have to dispute those supposed 'Playoffs Exprs' with Dallas, or any European that is right now in his country would have to spend at least two weeks of quarantine within the United States before I can train again. One more piece of the eternal puzzle that the NBA has to perform to achieve, within a reasonable time, the resumption of this season.

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