CJ McCollum decided against building a home basketball gym when he purchased his house. He figured that he would always have access to the Portland Trail Blazers’ practice facility if he wanted to work out or get some shots up on his own.
That was before the coronavirus pandemic upended the sports world.
Shortly after the NBA suspended its season on March 11 due to the coronavirus crisis, the league directed its teams to close their practice facilities. McCollum said Wednesday that he hasn’t shot a basketball in at least two weeks.
“I’m trying to stay as close (to game ready) as possible, but it’s hard,” McCollum said. “It’s hard to train in a way that’s effective when you don’t have all the resources. I’m not complaining about it. This is the situation I’m in, I’m cool with it, but to actually be able to shoot would be great.”
Since the NBA suspended its season, McCollum said he has spent a lot of time on conference calls, focusing in on his other business ventures. But he said that he is still holding out hope that the NBA season will resume, and doing what he can to stay ready. He is putting his stationary bike to good use and has talked to former Blazers center Meyers Leonard about using the basketball court at the house that Leonard still owns in Portland.
But McCollum said he believes that players would need to practice with their teams for at least a few weeks before any games could potentially resume.
“I think the first thing that we would have to do is get in game shape,” McCollum said. “Obviously, we’re all trying to work out, we’re trying to do what we can at home. Some people are going on runs, maybe riding bikes. ... It’s not the same as physically getting up and down and playing on the basketball court. I think I would have to take some time to go through that process, that period of one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three, five-on-five, getting up and down full court. I think it would take us some time, to say the least, especially depending on when we would end up starting.”
When, and if, the NBA resumes its season remains unknown.
Commissioner Adam Silver said this week that he does not expect to make any decisions on when or how the NBA could resume play until at least May. The NBA is considering multiple plans for a potential restart, including resuming the season in a single location where all teams and team personnel can be isolated to ensure the health and safety of everyone involved.
“I don’t know how you could really find an area that’s completely isolated from outsiders,” McCollum said. “That’s the problem that I think MLB and most sports are facing. If you quarantine the players individually, you’d have to make sure they have no interactions with no one. You don’t know what family they have, where they would be traveling from, you’re basically isolating them because they could be an asymptomatic carrier, which could kind of disturb things and throw off the balance of everything you’re trying to accomplish. ... But if there is a way, I think one of these major sports organizations is going to figure it out.”
McCollum said he would like the league to play out the rest of the season, even if that means delaying the start of the 2020-21 season. The Blazers were in ninth place in the Western Conference standings with 16 games left in the regular season when the season was suspended.
Yet, he said that health and safety were his first priority and he couldn’t predict whether there would be a way for sports to safely resume this summer.
“I think everyone is on the same page: Health comes first,” McCollum said. “Obviously, a lot of money here is at stake, but people’s lives are more important than money. I think we’ve all come to that agreement that we want make sure that we’re all being as safe as possible before we continue to move forward.”
-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg
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