Go ahead, call this a hypothetical, since the various sports leagues’ restart plans – wallet-driven wish-casting disguised as a benevolent gesture to help return normalcy to the nation – is little more than a subject-to-change hypothetical anyway.
I’ll believe the NBA is back when and only when my Twitter feed is again flooded with Celtics fans complaining that Mike Breen is rooting for the Celtics’ opponent. I expect that to be sometime in 2021.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t deal in hypotheticals too. So consider this: Say that somehow everything goes well in the Orlando bubble and – stay with me, because this requires a significant dosage of willing suspension of disbelief – the reworked NBA season is played in full, without further interruption, abbreviation or outright shutdown due to positive COVID-19 tests among the participants.