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  • Matt, What do you think?

  • Your biggest concern is if your player seeing how this reported agreement looks right now with the date and the S Coast.

  • I just think the fact that you know, key people made a long run, uh, into the playoffs, obviously into the bubble toe.

  • Win a championship in particular.

  • LeBron James.

  • And you know, we're creatures of habit in 2020 has taught us anything but normalcy.

  • So, uh, the fact that guys, we're gonna have to come back early.

  • I think load management is going to be a key theme for the first month, month or two.

  • And people are just gonna have to understand that because at the end of the day, we saw great playoffs this year, very high energy and great competition.

  • And if we want that this upcoming season thes guys, we're gonna have to somehow find some time to rest.

  • Yeah, I think you're right on it, Matt.

  • You know LeBron James, who will be 36 years old next month, averaged 39.8 minutes a game over the final five games of that final.

  • Now, by the way, Jimmy Butler average 44.7 minutes a game over those Final Five games.

  • Why?

  • Because they're like, Look, I'll sleep later.

  • I'll sleep when I'm dead, like Warren's even used to say, because they thought they were gonna have a nice long rest to get ready for the next season.

  • Now that isn't the case, so I worry not just about load management.

  • I worry about injuries, Rachel, because the flip side of this is someone like Clay Thompson, who had a tornado cl.

  • He hasn't played in something like, I don't know, 17 months or something crazy like that.

  • There's a lot of players who haven't played in several months over a year in some cases, and you worry about them as they come back.

  • So you have these players all at different points of their conditioning and their offseason regiment, and we know like you take someone like LeBron who does everything to the T.

  • This is going to mess up the way he likes to prepare himself for a season and he's certainly not going to be the only one.

  • And that's such a good point about the variation between players.

  • You can take a look at these numbers.

  • The proposed December 22nd start would mean a gap of only 72 days from Game six of the NBA Finals.

  • So that's for the Heat Lakers great, but less than three months for the conference finalists from Denver, right and Boston.

  • But then keep going, right, because you've got non bubble teams.

  • They'll have had six more months off in the Final Four teams.

  • You've got the teams that Onley made it right through the seating games and didn't make it even into the playoffs.

  • Look at them right.

  • You've got bubble, but no playoffs.

  • 129 days lost in the conference finals, 86 days made the final 72 days.

  • That is a huge swing.

  • How do you expect that, Jackie to affect the different teams in those different positions?

  • I do, and it will be very interesting.

  • I'm sure all the coaches who haven't played for a really long time has spent most of that time trying to figure out how they can best maximize the idea that rest is going to be their friend, as opposed to some of these other play teams who are gonna be trying to figure out how to rest their players while the season is going on.

  • It's gonna be very interesting to see how different teams approach this, because I think it's gonna be very different for each case.

  • I completely agree with that and, uh, I'm jumping a little bit ahead in the show, but this is what I think.

  • It's a great idea to add the playing games later because we're gonna have to consider injury.

  • It takes a lot of luck.

  • Some teams might be late starting that had a long run into things.

  • So I think it.

  • You know, if we get a chance to play those playing games with that seven through 10, as we're gonna discuss later, forgive me for jumping ahead.

  • I think it's gonna do ah, lot of teams from justice because it's gonna take some teams.

  • It's timeto get over injury and catch their rhythm and normally they would be out of the playoffs and those kind of situations.

  • But hopefully with the playing game which we all enjoyed this season in the bubble is gonna give some of those team is gonna take a little bit longer to get their engine started.

  • A chance to still make the playoffs.

  • Matt Barnes.

  • I have no problem with you teasing what's gonna come up later in the show.

  • So if you were stay tuned, that is excellent television, and I would just add this to the sort of things, too.

  • Be concerned or think about as we march forward with this new agreement.

  • We talk about the TV deals being important, right?

  • It's not just us here at ESPN is TNT is the regional sports networks that needs 70 games to make their contracts things like that, because that is going to be the MBA source of money, right?

  • But what those games look like on TV is gonna be important if you want the ratings that bring in the advertising revenue, right?

  • What made them look good in the bubble was all these virtual fans, right?

  • It was the arenas with these huge video boards around that didn't make you see all those empty seats all the time.

  • I don't know what arenas they're going to do from place to place to make these games look on TV to some degree, like they looked in the bubble.

  • Some states, as we showed earlier, can have between 25 500 people in the building.

  • Are they gonna put them in sweets?

  • How would that affect video boards?

  • Or they try to have some people courtside.

  • This is all gonna be a factor once you get this deal done.

  • It's kind of like planning the bubble.

  • Once you get the first part done.

  • That just brings up 10 more questions on each branch of the tree of How are we now going to do this?

  • How are we now going to do that?

  • And there's still work to do ahead of maximizing these games that you've got on your schedule.

  • So this league, like so many businesses across America at different valuations, can stay afloat as America goes through this pandemic.

  • Thanks for watching ESPN on YouTube for live streaming sports and premium content.

Matt, What do you think?

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