Toronto Raptors’ season in jeopardy as the NBA looks for options

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported on Friday that the NBA is currently heading towards canceling the 2019-20 season. For the Toronto Raptors, and the rest of the league, that means no more basketball for a long time.

It’s been 24 days since the 2019-20 NBA season was suspended indefinitely. The Toronto Raptors played the night before against the Utah Jazz on the final game of their west coast road trip. Now, it looks like that might be their last game of basketball for the foreseeable future.

Appearing on SportsCenter on Friday afternoon, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that he had spoken to both the NBA and the NBPA (National Basketball Player’s Association) and it was clear that the league were angling towards a scenario that would allow them to cancel the 2019-20 NBA season.

“I’ve talked to both sides of this issue, and it is clear that the NBA is angling to set up a deal that enables them to shut the season down,” Windhorst said, before adding: “they are not having talks about how to restart the league, they are having financial talks about what would happen if the season shuts down…and I think there’s a significant amount of pessimism.”

Windhorst does mention that the NBA doesn’t have to take that avenue yet and are giving themselves an option either way, so there still remains a glimmer of hope that the NBA season can resume in the not-so-distant future, but as we know, basketball is secondary to life and keeping the people safe and healthy comes first and foremost.

For now, that is the only objective. Basketball – despite its ability to help take our mind off the world around us – will just have to wait until we are in a better position. The NBA, according to Windhorst, had been keeping tabs on the situation with the Chinese Basketball Association.

The CBA called back its foreign players last month so they could complete quarantine ahead of the season – which was reportedly hoping to restart in the middle of April over the next few weeks. However, on Tuesday of last week, the Chinese Government ordered a delay to the restart of the CBA season.

With that information at hand, it seems even more unlikely that the NBA season will be restarting any time soon, especially since China is a few weeks ahead of the USA and Canada in its timeline for COVID-19.

If the 2019-20 season were to be suspended, the Raptors title-defense would stop in its tracks. The team was second in the Eastern Conference with a record of 46-18 and had just secured a spot in the playoffs. The NBA only had 21-percent of its regular-season schedule remaining.

The news is frustrating, but the safety of everyone involved shouldn’t be risked if there is no need to do so. For now, we wait.