With a plethora of players from across the league's landscape being forced to enter Health and Safety Protocols and some games being postponed as a result, the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association are talking about instituting a rule that would force teams hit hard by COVID-19 to sign replacement players, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Baxter Holmes. The conversations are currently ongoing.
The NBA's Board of Governors held a call on call Friday, and the consensus was to do whatever possible to avoid potential postponements or cancellations. Having teams add replacement players would do that. As it currently stands, a team that is extremely shorthanded has the option to add an additional player via a hardship exception. This would become mandatory. Here's what such a plan would look like:
In the proposed plan, after the first case of COVID, a team would be permitted to add a 10-day player, league sources said, but after a second, third and fourth case, teams would be required to add a 10-day player. Teams would be limited to three replacement players, but the new plan would, overall, require teams to maintain enough depth so that the league wouldn't be forced to cancel or postpone games because some teams didn't have the league-required eight healthy players.
... That team would need to have four players sidelined -- either by injury or COVID or some combination of the two -- and down to only 13 healthy players for them to add a replacement player. But once a team had five players sidelined, it would then become mandatory for them to sign a replacement player.
These replacement players reportedly wouldn't count against a team's salary cap or luxury tax. This plan could potentially be approved in the near future. Meanwhile, there has been a push from team executives and coaches to alter the protocols in order to allow asymptomatic players to play in games However, the league hasn't shown any willingness to do so.
Over 80 players have entered the protocols so far this season, and virtually every team has had to deal with absences as a result. The NBA had to postpone over 30 games last season, and that's something the league is trying to prevent from happening again. Forcing teams to add replacement players probably won't improve the quality of play out on the court, but it would curb potential postponements, which is the goal.
