LeBron James Refuses To Play Basketball if NBA Implements Coronavirus Contingency
The coronavirus might do what NBA defenders have never done — stop LeBron James.
The Los Angeles Lakers star said Friday that if the NBA ever implements an emergency coronavirus plan that calls for games without fans in the stands, he won’t be playing.
“We play games without the fans? Nah, that’s impossible,” James told reporters Friday.
“I ain’t playing if I ain’t got the fans in the crowd. That’s who I play for. I play for my teammates, and I play for the fans. That’s what it’s all about. So if I show up to [an] arena and there ain’t no fans in there, I ain’t playing. They can do what they want to do,” he said.
LeBron James on possibility of NBA playing games behind closed doors because of coronavirus. LeBron: “I ain’t playing” if there are no fans pic.twitter.com/kpHg6bsFYO
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) March 7, 2020
James was responding to a memo sent around by the league Friday telling teams to develop contingency plans in the event that the NBA ever decides to hold its games without a crowd in attendance, according to ESPN.
The memo detailed potential actions that teams might need to take “if it were to become necessary to play a game with only essential staff present,” The Associated Press reported.
Teams should also be prepared “for the possibility of implementing temperature checks on players, team staff, referees, and anyone else who is essential to conducting such a game in the team’s arena.”
The NBA’s teams were also advised to prepare a plan for “communicating quickly and effectively with team and arena staff who are/aren’t essential for this purpose.”
Boston Celtics guard Kemba Walker was not enthused over the option.
“That would be terrible,” he said.
“That would be boring. They might as well cancel the whole game before that.”
“But at the end of the day, it is getting serious. I don’t know. It would be very weird though for sure.”
Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo said playing in an empty arena would be quite different.
“It’s going to be really weird if they do do it,” he said, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “because playing home and away, it ain’t going to be like a difference. It’s going to be really quiet.”
Sporting events will also be facing the question of dealing with community-level bans on mass gatherings.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health, for example, has urged the cancellation of “large gatherings, such as concerts, sporting events, conventions or large community events.”
San Francisco had two people test positive for the virus on Thursday.
However, the Golden State Warriors have said that Saturday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers is still on.
On Friday, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore banned fans from attending an NCAA Division III men’s basketball tournament game that was being held there.
Maryland has also had confirmed cases of the virus.
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