Donovan Mitchell Giving An Inside Look Of When The NBA Shut Down Was Fascinating
I've been blogging on this site since March 2015 and in my time living on the internet I've seen some crazy shit when it comes to the NBA. Wild free agency kidnappings, crazy playoff moments, fights, you name it I've seen and blogged it. To this day nothing, and I mean nothing comes close to what happened on March 11th. That was one of the most insane blogging night of my career because everything was happening so fast. It started with a tweet and then boom, instant chaos. Things were changing before I was even able to hit publish. Every Shams/Woj tweet was another major bomb. It didn't take long for Adam Silver to shut everything down and that was a pretty big deal since the NBA was the first major sport to shut down in the states. As we know, it's been crazy ever since.
It's pretty wild to think how much this hiatus could change the future of the NBA when you really think about it. Not just from a financial standpoint and the CBA/salary cap either. That's important for sure, but we're also talking about changes in legacy/direction of franchises. Now teams that might have not been contenders for a title have just as good an opportunity as anyone else. Teams like BOS/PHI/LAC etc that were going to enter the playoffs banged up are now 100% healthy. If there is a team that underachieves in the bubble, maybe that impacts what they look like moving forward. Maybe a team that might have made changes in a normal offseason will change course if they go deep in this new environment. It's all up for grabs for the first time in what feels like forever. No home court in an NBA playoff series is a gigantic difference. I'd argue home court is the most important in basketball compared to any other sport. It's all just so foreign and nobody, not players or coaches or media, has any idea what to expect.
That's why I find it fascinating to hear the reactions of when everything first went down from the people involved. It's a great look a situation that the NBA has never faced before. Remember when Mark Cuban learned about the shutdown on live television? Hearing Donovan Mitchell talk about the situation was pretty eye opening. When Ernie said he couldn't answer if sports will ever be the same, he's not wrong. Who knows what things will look like in the future because it doesn't look like this is going away anytime soon.
On a positive note, we're 10 days away from our first ramp up game in Orlando. That will make it 141 total days since the shutdown on March 11th, essentially an entire offseason. I don't know if anyone saw that coming when shit initially hit the fan.