NEW YORK (WJW) — Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred warns the sport will shut down for the season if the coronavirus isn’t managed better, sources told ESPN. Manfred reportedly told this information to the MLB Players Association Executive Director Tony Clark on Friday. The alleged conversation follows multiple coronavirus outbreaks within the league. Eighteen Miami […]
League officials have expressed concerns over the presence of the virus and are questioning whether MLB’s protocols are being properly followed by players, the news outlet reports.
Several players who were briefed on the call reportedly fear that if another outbreak materializes or if players do not strictly abide by MLB protocols, Manfred may shut down the season as early as Monday.‘Baseball is in huge trouble’: MLB faces first coronavirus crisis
During certain games, players have been seen high-fiving each other, spitting and not wearing masks. Some state and local government officials have expressed concern over these behaviors and “pressured baseball about players skirting the mandates outlined in the league’s 113-page operations manual.”
One official even told ESPN “there are some bad decisions being made” when asked about off-the-field choices.
Peter Moore will step down as Liverpool FC’s chief executive officer at the end of August, following a successful three-year contract overseeing the club’s off-field business operations. Moore left the United Kingdom permanently in 1981 for the United States and enjoyed a successful career at Sega, Reebok, Microsoft and EA. He returned to the U.K. in…
The Clippers could take something from their most irregular final regular-season meeting on Thursday in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, a 103-101 loss to the Lakers. “It’s a good lesson for the team,” Coach Doc Rivers said over Zoom. “You can’t make as many mistakes as we made in one game and be shorthanded.” The “self-inflicted…
Judging by rink board adverts, the Columbus Blue Jackets will have plenty of Ohio-sourced gas and groceries for the playoffs against Toronto. They certainly had more get-up-n’-go than the Boston Bruins on Thursday night, and lots of grind in case the Maple Leafs didn’t know they’ll be handful in Game 1 of the best-of-five qualifier […]
Tyson Barrie predicts Sheldon Keefe and the Maple Leafs coaches “will hammer us with video” the next couple of days after finally seeing playoff foe Columbus in a real game. But rather than rely solely on Thursday night’s Blue Jackets-Bruins’ exhibition intel, Keefe saw much of what he needed to know in a jolting TV […]
[ad_1] Ja Rule — yes, Ja Rule — spoke for everyone who watched the Pelicans-Jazz matchup Thursday night (WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE BELOW). Why the fuck is Zion on minutes restrictions??? — Ja Rule (@jarule) July 31, 2020 NBA RESTART: Schedule | Playoff bracket | Bubble, explained After re-entering the NBA’s campus following an excused absence and being […]
After re-entering the NBA’s campus following an excused absence and being cleared to play in the restart opener, Pelicans rookie Zion Williamson scored 13 points in just 15 minutes as New Orleans fell to Utah in a tightly contested game. Williamson played the first five minutes of the fourth quarter but never returned after being subbed out with 7:19 left in regulation.
When asked about Williamson sitting on the bench as the Jazz took control of the game, Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry told reporters the 20-year-old was on a minutes restriction.
“Well, of course we wish we could’ve played him down the stretch, but we had used the minutes that were given to us. That’s the way it is. We weren’t going to stick him back out there,” Gentry said. “Our medical people said that we played in the minutes that were allowed [for] us to play him, and we’ll just move on.
“I thought he looked good. I thought he had some good moments, and obviously we’re a much better and a much different basketball team when he’s out on the floor.”
Gentry’s explanation is confusing for a few reasons. First, Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes reported prior to tipoff Williamson would play in “short bursts” but noted he wouldn’t necessarily be on a minutes restriction. So was Williamson on a burst plan, a minutes restriction or both?
Second, if Gentry did know Williamson couldn’t play more than approximately 15 minutes, did he not plan to save some of those minutes in case the Pelicans needed Williamson in crunch time? Every “seeding game” matters for the Pels because they are fighting against multiple Western Conference teams for the final playoff spot. If New Orleans’ coaching staff didn’t consider this scenario, then that’s a major error.
And third, what is Williamson’s status right now? Williamson said after the loss he hasn’t suffered any recent medical setbacks and denied he had to sit because of conditioning issues.
“Not even just conditioning, it’s just getting my flow to the game back,” Williamson said. “This is the NBA. These are the best players in the world. You want to feel comfortable. I don’t want to hurt my team more than I help them in a sense.”
Pelicans’ Zion Williamson, kept to 15 minutes in bubble opener, said he hasn’t suffered any medical setbacks & added that sitting during crunch time isn’t solely due to conditioning. “It’s just getting my flow to the game back… I don’t want to hurt my team more than I helped.” pic.twitter.com/uK7FROHrW7
Williamson is the future of the franchise. If there is any risk of him getting seriously hurt, then clearly he shouldn’t play. No reasonable person would question the Pelicans’ decision-making process in that situation.
However, this appears to be more of a communication issue. If the Pels want to make a playoff push, then everyone needs to be on the same page.
Otherwise, Ja Rule (and the rest of us) will keep asking the same question.
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — From the night this NBA season began, to the night it began again, the Lakers-Clippers has carried the feel of a heavyweight bout. In March, each team seemed trim, limber, ready to contend. After a hiatus unlike any in the sports’ history at four-and-a-half months long, the Lakers and Clippers…
Here’s some more fallout from the Miami Marlins outbreak: Major League Baseball is going to start thinking about how to enforce safety recommendations.
Major League Baseball made a lot of noise a couple of months ago about how great its anti-COVID-19 protocols were. About how detailed and thoughtful and proactive their plan would be, such that no man could say that they were being irresponsible about returning to play in the middle of a pandemic.
Except the plan had a slight problem: nothing in the plan explained how the league would handle a coronavirus outbreak. It made no provision about what to do if a certain number of players on a given team tested positive, let alone the number of positive tests that would be required to shut a team down. It also said nothing about what, exactly, teams can or should do to ensure compliance with the 113-some-odd pages of rules it laid down about player deportment.
Now, after the Marlins outbreak — after two teams’ schedules have been suspended and over half of one of those teams’ rosters is out of commission — Major League Baseball is getting around to dealing with that. From Jeff Passan at ESPN:
Following the coronavirus outbreak that infected nearly half of the Miami Marlins’ roster and prompted the temporary suspension of the team’s season, Major League Baseball is encouraging players not to leave hotels in road cities except for games, mandating the use of surgical masks instead of cloth masks during travel and requiring every team to travel with a compliance officer who ensures players and staff properly follow the league’s protocol, sources told ESPN.
Passan doesn’t say who the compliance officer will be or should be. Whether it’s a player, a trainer, a front office employee, or a new staffer altogether. But I think that matters and I’d be curious to know what teeth, if any, the job would have to actually enforce things.
I say this because, in the wake of the Marlins outbreak, some have cited the lack of veteran leadership on the team as a reason things got so bad. If that kind of thing is going to be cited as significant — if you’re relying on the typical sort of unwritten rules enforcement that teams use for all other matters of clubhouse deportment — no “compliance officer” is going to make any headway. If teams don’t take this sort of thing seriously and if there is no actual punishment in place for unsafe behavior, players are going to police themselves, or not police themselves, in the same ways they always have.
MLB has yet to determine whether the Marlins players will be paid for the postponed games if they are unable to play every game in the 60-game season, but will pay the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees and Washington Nationals for games missed because of the Marlins’ outbreak . . . The March 26 agreement states that players will receive prorated pay only for the number of games their teams play, but MLB made an exception for the Nats, Phillies and Yankees since they weren’t responsible for the postponed games.
Which is to say that the Marlins might be punished for getting sick. Which, based on the sentiment I’ve seen online, is OK with a lot of people because of rumors about irresponsible behavior the team engaged in that led to their outbreak.
The problem, though: (a) that behavior has not been confirmed in any way, it’s just rumored; and (b) even if some people on the club did do unsafe things that led to their infection, it’s doubtful everyone did, so punishing those who were not involved and who merely got infected because they shared a clubhouse or a bus or a plane with those who were is kind of a problem. And, that aside, MLB, we must reiterate, had no mandatory or enforceable guidelines which actually governed the players’ behavior and there was no one in place to ensure compliance with the league’s suggestions.
Which is to say, MLB instituted a system based on recommendations and trust and now it is considering docking the pay of not only those who may have not followed those recommendations, but everyone who was infected by their irresponsible behavior. Talk about passing the buck.
Anyway, kudos to Major League Baseball for now, a week into the season and months into their plan to resume baseball, finally thinking about ways in which to deal with the global pandemic into which it has thrust itself beyond the merely theoretical. I hope they do come up with something. Better late than never, right?
The Boston Bruins on Thursday revealed how they will pay tribute to Colby Cave upon the restart of the 2019-20 season. Each player will sport helmet decals to honor Cave, who in April died at 25 years old after a brain bleed. Cave played in 23 games over parts of two seasons with the Bruins…
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The NBA season is in overtime. For LeBron James, and by extension the Los Angeles Lakers, every one of those minutes is precious. There’s a clock running on James’ prime years, which have still unbelievably kept churning on. But in the NBA bubble on the Disney campus, those sands in…
The view from left field 