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Fans and the media have been speculating an NBA return ever since the suspension due to the Coronavirus on March 11. One of those people is Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report, who reported a possibility of the NBA resuming in a single, isolated, centralized location.

Pincus featured on the latest episode of The Lake Lake Show podcast and discussed his theory.

“One person could infect the whole league again, just like that.. they don’t want to start it up only to have it shut down again, they want to do it right. So that line of thought, how do you do that for 30 teams? My thought was, do it in a centralized location and if there’s one place that the NBA has experienced playing it’s in Las Vegas every summer.”

In a report on March 23, Pincus went into much depth regarding a Las Vegas-NBA return. Describing the neutral site theory as holding the potential to “alleviate the complications”. In Las Vegas infrastructure is already in place, like the T-Mobile Arena and the Thomas & Mack Center. As well as hotels.

However, an issue of getting broadcast partners on-board was brought up as being another factor. With Pincus suggesting “games could be played throughout the day, one after another, until the schedule is complete”.

On the latest episode of The Lake Lake Show, Pincus went into further depth on a time-frame. Stating that returning NBA teams will need a training camp, possibly around 3 weeks to return to fitness. To minimise injury, especially with a high-intensity postseason just around the corner.

The NBA’s viewpoint:

Further details have been provided in a report on March 26 by Jabari Young of CNBC.

“But if the NBA does return, team executives told CNBC they favored Las Vegas as a possible location to conclude the season.”

“An NBA spokesperson told CNBC the league has considered many “scenarios” but is not close to rolling out a plan. When asked if the NBA would pick up where it left off or jump into the postseason, Silver said he didn’t have “a good enough sense of how long a period this is going to be” to give a definite answer.”

Check out Eric Pincus on episode 26 of The Lake Lake Show podcast here. In addition, read his in-depth report from March 23 here.