The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Sam Amick Discusses What's Next For The NBA

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

This is the Matt Thomas show. We're on the Matt Thomas show. Before we go to our next guest, thoughts and prayers to all the mothers out there. School has been closed for the rest of the year. So enjoy that homeschooling. My wife, Kimberly, listening, you're doing a great job with our kids. Kids, stop being lazy. Go and finish that school workout.

So that's it. by thoughts and prayers of those of you that are seniors in high school. Do you have to have a virtual graduation, I guess? Is that how you would do it? We'll discuss things in a couple of minutes. Right now, our good friend of the program, Sam Amick, a major star. We talked about the heavy hitters in NBA journalism, and Sam is at the top of the list.

He joins us from, you still live it in Sacramento, correct? I am indeed, Matt. Thanks for having me. We live in the suburbs of Sacramento, about 20 minutes out. All right. So before we get to basketball, Northern California has been hit hard. Obviously, Bay Area, perhaps more than just anywhere else except New York. What's it like a little bit further inland?

What's going on with the city of Sacramento in terms of getting around and whatnot? We're doing okay. Sacramento County has got a pretty fair number of cases, and they've been hit. Again, like you alluded to, not like the Bay Area, not like L.A., but certainly not nothing. either a couple of hotspots, one church in particular, that had a really bad situation about a month ago with quite a few deaths. And so the farther out you get in our town, which is called Elk Grove, you know, it's been pretty mild. But certainly we are following through on the stay-at-home policy that is statewide. You know, we work at home.

We have two sons that are 13 and 11, so we get out for bike rides just to get some fresh air. And if you come close to people, you grab the mask. out of your pocket and throw that puppy on. So a new way of life, but we're holding up okay. Sam Amick, the great basketball writer from the athletic with us here on the program. Okay, Sam, so I've gone, I've had an incredible Kevin Fever. This is the time of the year where I guess Wednesday would have been the regular season finale. I'd be on the road right now going to some playoff game or maybe the Rockets would be home.

So I try to find optimism and pessimism and trying to find somewhere in between. I found great hope in your column on the Athletic, and we want obviously people to come check that out. I guess you've got a 90-day trial on the website. Take us as much as you can into your column, and what are you hearing? And more importantly, anybody going to give you guys any update on what the board of governors talked about today are going to talk about? Yeah, I appreciate it, Matt. As far as the column goes, just to be honest with you, I was somewhat surprised in the end

with the tone that I ended up taking in terms of where my head was at before I made a bunch of phone calls and then how my viewpoint was changed by the people with whom I spoke and combination of owners, players, and agents and league officials where I kind of kept making the rounds and saying, okay, this person's optimistic, that person's optimistic, well, this person's really optimistic. And I was waiting to run into somebody who just said, nah, this season's dead. It's not going to happen. And again, like I made it clear in the column.

I don't want to misrepresent the sample size. You know, I wasn't talking to every player, every owner, every agent, and not even close. But I still definitely think that even with the small sample size, it was very telling. And more importantly, and this wasn't made abundantly clear in the column. But, you know, a story like this, you're going to eventually take that pulse from the league itself. And that may be more than anything else is what got. my attention is that nobody from the league was talking me off this cliff to say, now you're striking the wrong chord. They essentially confirmed what I had been hearing.

Adam Silverhead said, I guess within the last week or 10 days, that the NBA as a league was not going to say anything publicly around until about May 1st. What should we expect if indeed he holds that date? What kind of news do you think he will present to its fan base and the rest of the teams? To be honest with you, I don't think that this is something I have. to keep quiet. It's not necessarily out there, but I would anticipate that you're going to hear some stuff actually later today because Adam is, unless things change, Adam is on track to hold a conference call with reporters around 5 o'clock Eastern. So I think it's not going to have probably a ton of substance. It'll be a status update. And I think he's probably still going to,

you know, kind of kick that can down to May 1st. Because even in, you know, talking to these different people that I talk to, you know, they all came with the caveat of you, you obviously can't know right now because you just got to be patient, let time go by and see what happens with the curve, so to speak, all over the country, all over the world. And that's where we are, is that the NBA, like a lot of other, like every other sports league, is going to have to reassess next month. You know, it seems like there's some hope within NBA circles that maybe. Maybe players would start training on June 1st and spend a couple of weeks on their own, you know, then get into training camps and then be on your way. And then from there, you have so many questions that you can do an entire show on. Where might they play?

Right. You know, what do you do about testing? What do you do about, you know, even the length of the schedule? Do you scrap the rest of the regular season? Do you try to, I think there's about 17 games left on average for teams. So do you cut that in half? Do you shorten the first round playoff series?

There's a lot of, you know, wiggle room here that is going to be debated for sure. There's no such thing as the all clear. We may not ever get that within the next couple, three years. But if I was to give you the commissioner's title and say, all right, you've been given the clearance from the CDC

and from the president and the different sports leagues. We're going to resume play because you are so vested in the NBA. Sam is not only a fan, but a great journalist. Give me your quick one minute how we're finishing this bad boy in terms of what you would do for games where you would play them how would you handle the playoffs and more importantly what about the following season oh man that's a tough question man it's hard to answer that

without knowing all of the books all of the finances all of the pressures from these respective owners and i think that's a major factor right now and just to call a spade a spade in your neck of the woods you know around the league there's a lot of focus on Tillman Fertita and him being somebody who is widely seen as kind of a poster boy for, and I know things are relative, but for financial, you know, kind of challenges that might impact the way he sees this situation. You hear other owners in that same boat, you know, the Utah Jazz had a bunch of layoffs recently.

Their businesses have been hit really hard. They're non-NBA businesses. So it's hard to answer that from a human standpoint. and Adam Silver, I do believe, is a very good human, is I would be, first and foremost, identifying the most vulnerable people within whatever community might be involved in a playoff setting. And, again, to keep it Houston-centric, a guy who I think I might call soon to check in on and who's been on my mind is Mike D. Antony, because it's one thing to assume, which is not, you shouldn't do this, but okay, you look at NBA Play-A. players, you say they're young, they're healthy. The science tells you that they would likely be okay, even if they got infected. Mike Antony and coaches like him are a completely different age bracket.

I believe Mike's around 68. And, you know, other coaches, Steve Clifford in Orlando, they would be in the playoffs. He's had previous health situations. That is what makes me nervous from the NBA standpoint is just make sure that you truly think about everybody who could be in harm's way here. because it sounds great to finish the season up until somebody gets gravely ill, and then that's going to be on the league's hands. When you hear Las Vegas as an epicenter in terms of putting a bubble around these players, what do you think?

First blush. What do you think? It's funny because even since the column came out, this happens every time. Like, you wish that you had that one phone call before you hit publish. It will see what Adam says, but actually yesterday started hearing some chatter that the league might have already kind of moved on to other options. I don't know what they are, but that Vegas is, you know, at least the way it was put to me is kind of pushing it towards unofficially out for whatever reason. And I don't know that to be 100% true. And again,

I'm curious to see what Adam says. But the reason that Vegas was the leader in the clubhouse makes a ton of sense because it's a combination of facilities. You need multiple arenas where you can play basketball. And in Vegas, you can do that at Manila Bay. You can do that at UNLV. you know, there are venues all over the place. You can do that at the impact basketball academy, which I don't even know if they'd be willing to offer their property, but that's another gym in Vegas. You need a bunch of gyms and you need hotels.

And it doesn't hurt in Vegas that you had relationship history in terms of the infrastructure because they have Summer League out there. They're incredibly familiar with Vegas. Today, Keith Smith wrote for Yahoo Sports about the Walt Disney World possibility. Now, I haven't heard that within NBA circles, but you get a sense of, you know, the types of ideas that might be floating around. Literally, as you and I said, you're talking, the board of governors meeting is still going on virtually, I believe. So, yeah, I don't know what that looks like, but you kind of see the components that are most important. Well, I had heard as well that the rumors of Las Vegas were not far-fetched, but there just wasn't a whole lot of substance to it.

but I do want to go and we'll wrap this up with this about do you put everybody in the same place? You know, baseball is thought about Arizona. Baseball is also thought about Arizona and Florida. The NBA has got one advantage of a baseball is that they are down to their home stretch of regular season games. You're not talking about as many players. And as every team gets eliminated, you're going to be losing players in that particular city. So, you know, I guess the question is, will there ever be games this season in these or in, Toyota Center with zero people in it.

Will there be any thought of doing that, or do you feel like at the end of day, if there is a resumption that it will be done in one century-located place? No, I think it could possibly wind up being in a lot of NBA cities, but then you might have to fill in gaps in between. And to be honest, in my neck of the woods being just California, the California teams are likely going to have the most challenges in terms of getting the green light from the government because Gavin Newsom out here who I think has done a wonderful job the state governor in protecting people.

You know, he's, it's one thing. I mean, it's going to be the question of what the new definition is of a mass gathering. So if the Lakers, clippers, warriors, and kings want to use their arenas and they want to have 500 people involved, can they get the green light from the government? I don't know. And if they can't, it was supposed to me that, okay, now if it's the Lakers or whoever's still in the playoffs and the Clippers, you've got to go, you know, practice. Go ahead, go to Vegas with your team or just relocate if you can't get your job done

within your state. So I wouldn't be shocked to see, you know, the Rockets playing in Houston and, you know, the Lakers playing out of, you know, New Mexico for all I know. You know what I mean? Like, I think they're going to, Matt, I'll cap it with this on that topic. The league's willingness to bend here is definitely something to pay. attention to. I underestimated the degree to which they really do appear to be considering any and all solutions and be pretty determined to utilize those to get this thing done. And also, by the way,

Brooklyn's not going to play a game in that state. So that's one example on these side of things. Sam, again, always appreciate it. You're one of the reasons why I subscribe to the athletic is your stuff so good. I wish you and your family very safe and happy times and hopefully some really good news, whether it be today, May 1st, June 15th, we get a resolution because I had Eric Gordon on the show last week, and he said, look, I'll go anywhere. The overriding factor is these guys, these multimillionaires want to make their money, and they're getting their money right now, but they want a season finished. They want to cry on a champion.

And I think they're very flexible, maybe not LeBron so much, but everybody else seems to be like, you know what, whatever we've got to do, let's cry out champion. And for that, we appreciate you spending some time with us today, and we look forward to reading your stuff online very soon. You got it. Thank you, Matt. You got it. Sam Amick with us from The Athletic on the Matt Thomas Show,

is our time. 713212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. The one thing we can definitely say is, wherever these guys play the NBA games, it probably won't be done in front of the public, which television ratings will be skyrocketing good, but how much revenue will it ultimately cost the teams?

I think just getting back on the court probably will do more for them than anything else.