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How the NBA is addressing mental health, social justice concerns of players for the restart

Daily News - 6/28/2020

Jun. 28--The threat of a global pandemic has meant a lot of people have gotten used to being under restrictive living situations. NBA players are not very different, spending much of the last few months in their homes or apartments, in some cases with their families.

But ahead of the NBA's restart in Orlando next month, players, coaches and other NBA staffers will have to cope with an entirely different kind of isolation that will remove them from familiar surroundings and companions.

While Oklahoma City's Chris Paul has gotten plenty of family time recently, he finds himself soaking it up all the more now as he prepares for the season to restart.

"Guys are making sacrifices coming, so you will be away from your family probably for a period of time," Paul said. "There's so many different things that come up."

While the thousands of people who will be headed to the NBA's campus next month will be facing similar challenges, the players on the 22 teams were most critical to producing the on-court product for the return from hiatus. And convincing the National Basketball Players Association, the vocal union for players in the league, that the proposed campus at Walt Disney World Resort would be safe, engaging and still give them a platform for social justice issues that have recently resurfaced to the forefront of politics was a tough proposition that took weeks.

The agreement of the NBA and NBPA officially announced Friday was the biggest step so far in actually realizing the restart, but some players have still voiced some skepticism about it and a small number has decide to sit out the rest of the season completely. Aside from the safety issues related to COVID-19, which the NBA will address with physical distancing, testing and masks among other measures, Paul said the mental drain of being locked down in Florida hotels for up to three-and-a-half months might be the most arduous challenge for the players.

"I think mental health is the biggest thing that a lot of us players think of first, right, because although a lot of us always look like we're all together or that we're fine, which most people do, that's not always the case," Paul said. "Especially coming out of quarantine and a lot of us being in situations that we've never been in before, and now we're going into an even tougher situation."

Mental health has been a hot topic in the NBA in recent seasons as stars such as Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan have been more forthcoming about struggles with anxiety and depression. Paul said those players in particular have elevated the league-wide dialogue about mental health and made it more of an open issue to address.

The NBA will have mental health resources available, provided largely virtually by teams, but also with a few in-person professionals, commissioner Adam Silver said. The NBPA will send Keyon Dooling, a former player who has helped tackle mental health issues for the league, to Florida. Mental health has been a concern since the hiatus began, with many young players isolated in their markets and unable to access gyms.

"We recognize that when you bring in mainly players, coaches, referees to a campus environment, it could also be isolating in different ways," Silver said. "Because while they'll have each other, we and the Players' Association put in place various protocols that require mask wearing and also physical distancing to protect everyone when we're there, and many of course of our players, at least initially, will be away from their families and away from their families at a difficult time."

Families will be able to join players after the first round of the playoffs, which should take place in August, but strict quarantine protocols will be in place.

The other major issue the NBA and NBPA had to work on was social justice commitments, which have been tacitly supported by Silver and the NBA for years. Players have taken a vocal role in demonstrations and various social media displays after nationwide uproar following the death of George Floyd. While players have been vocal before, a considerable number of them wanted to see more definitive action from the league and the team governors, hoping to utilize resources to help Black communities -- from where the NBA draws most of its players.

"Us players had conversations with each other, and one of the biggest things to tell you the truth was teams wanted to know where their governors stood on the situation," Paul said. "There's been a lot of hard conversations that have had to be had, and I think that was huge for players, right? For players, we want to know how someone feels, especially if you're putting their jersey on."

There haven't been many details yet about how exactly the league will invest in these causes, but the restart seems likely to feature players speaking out against racial inequities, especially those relating to police violence. Silver also acknowledged the league wants to improve its diversity in front offices, coaching staffs and business sides of its operations.

That has been one of the areas where players such as Kyrie Irving, Dwight Howard, Avery Bradley and Lou Williams have expressed concern. They've publicly worried that a return to the court could slow momentum for off-court causes that have been spotlighted throughout the country. Paul and NBPA executive director Michele Roberts acknowledged that there had been passionate discourse about that in the player ranks, which Roberts said was healthy.

"The African-American community in this country has been engaged in a conversation internally about what to do, all of us, not simply the National Basketball Association players, but all of us are," she said. "And the conversation, and I want to underscore that, that is happening between our players has been exactly that: What do we do? How do we do it? How should we do it? I can't imagine anything healthier than that. I would have been ashamed had there not been a conversation, if the players had been talking about getting back to play and nothing else, frankly as an African-American woman, I would have been disappointed."

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