NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said last Friday that the league was not in a position to resume the 2019-20 season, leaving fans guessing as to when they can expect games to return.
Ed Desser, president of Desser Media and a former league executive, said holding games without fans is still "the most likely thing to happen" but noted that the people shouldn't underestimate how much coordination that would require.
"Even playing without fans is not a trivial undertaking," he told Cheddar. "You still need to get maybe 1,000 people in a particular location. You need to deal with meals. You need to deal with practice."
The game of basketball in particular presents difficulties when compared to other sports. Golf or Nascar racing or even baseball involve much less direct contact than basketball, Desser added.
While the league would like to see a champion named by this summer, it's uncertain if that will be possible.
"I'd be surprised if it could be done by late June or July, frankly," Desser said. "That's certainly what they'd like to do, but of course they don't want to be in a position of endangering the player or other participant, endangering the fans certainly. So it's a difficult tussle."
The announcement of a further delay was another big disappointment for the league this season, which saw the deaths of former NBA great Kobe Bryant and former commissioner David Stern and a potentially costly feud with China sparked by a tweet from Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, in support of Hong Kong protesters.
"Commissioners are not just there to hand out the trophy at the end of the year," Desser said. "It's a core competency, really, to do crisis management. That's what Adam is doing today."
He noted that the commissioner's job requires a careful balance of multiple different stakeholders.
"The unique thing about a commissioner in sports is you're running a business, but you're also responsible to the players, responsible to the owners, responsible to the press and other forms of media, responsible to the arena owners, responsible to the fans, and responsible, or at least have to deal with, the government," he said.
"It's not an ordinary kind of CEO job. You have to be pretty good at dealing with controversies."
