Profound questions haunt re-opening the NBA

A long way from normal

BY HENRY ABBOTT

We look forward to seeing the NBA up and running again. But recent conversations with people involved in those decisions make clear just how incredibly difficult Adam Silver’s task is. The issues are profound and like nothing from the league’s history. Here are just some of the questions to be answered between here and normalcy: 

What if someone dies?
A front office executive told me this is what he’s worried about. This is a deadly virus, anecdotally quite a few people in and around the NBA have had it. In some cases, the symptoms have been serious. (NBA agent Brandon Grier told us he had a fever for eleven days, it sounded awful.) I heard about a recently retired player who had it worse. The NBA has its scientists and best practices, but there will be no perfect system to ensure that nobody in the league will get the virus at work. 

While this is a question with morals at its heart, it also has a chewy outer crust of business concerns: What happens if some player, coach,…