the framework is finally in place for sports to return

Wyatt Krueger

June 10, 2020

On the night of March 11, I sat down to watch the Jazz and Thunder play a regular season NBA game.

Right before tipoff, Scott Van Pelt appeared on the screen with a red “BREAKING NEWS” banner on the bottom to inform everyone that the game had been postponed due to multiple Utah players testing positive with COVID-19. It was a surreal moment - the severity of the coronavirus hit everyone across the country.

In the following days, the sports world saw conference tournaments and March Madness get cancelled in college basketball, while remaining professional sports seasons were indefinitely suspended.

It’s been almost three months since that day, and now that the dust has somewhat settled, sports are slowly making their way back into society.

Multiple international soccer leagues have resumed play without fans, while the NHL and NBA have officially released their plans to resume sports in July.

Here is a preview of what some sports are going to look like for the rest of 2020:

Last Thursday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that the league’s board of governors agreed on a 22 team regular season that will start on July 31st, with the NBA finals scheduled to run through early October.

The nine Eastern Conference and 13 Western Conference teams will be reporting to Orlando’s Walt Disney World Resort in the coming weeks to start a condensed training camp, before an eight-game regular season to determine the 16 playoff spots.

The Pelicans, Trailblazers, Suns, Kings, Spurs and Wizards will be battling to take the eight seed in their respective conferences, with an added play-in series if the nine seed is within four games of the eighth and final spot.

Out of the five major American sports leagues, the NBA seemed to provide the most specific plans for reopening play. It looks like we’re going to be in store for some high quality entertainment over the next few months.

As for the NHL, the league announced two weeks ago that their resumed season will include 24 teams at an unspecified time in late July, with 12 teams from each conference participating.

The top four seeds in each conference will get a “bye,” while the remaining eight teams in each conference will play a five-game series to face the top seeds in the following round.

In a sport where we saw the Las Vegas Golden Knights - an expansion team - make it to the Stanley Cup Final in their first year as a franchise, the addition of play-in games and eight additional teams will lead to an unpredictable NHL playoff.

On the other hand, the MLB is in a sticky situation with their players and owners refusing to settle on how their reduced season will play out.

This has included disputes over salaries, how long the season should be played amongst other settlements that don’t seem to be progressing. Owners are losing large amounts of money without fans in attendance, so they want to reduce MLB players salaries to compensate. So far, the players aren’t budging.

Max Scherzer, the star pitcher for the Washington Nationals, outlined the MLB players’ frustrations with the owners’ negotiations and their lack of transparency in a tweet on May 27.

Coming from a highly respected player in the league, this was concerning to read for baseball fans.

In a summer where baseball could reach more new fans than ever before, not having a season would be detrimental to the growth of the game going forward.

Regardless, the fact that professional sports are coming back at all is astounding considering where the sports world was in March.

Despite the despair and division going on in the country right now, sports have always brought people together in my eyes, and these athletes have a chance to provide a sense of normalcy to people during chaotic times.