The New Orleans Pelicans were not one of the top eight teams in the Western Conference at the time the 2019-20 NBA campaign was suspended back in mid-March, but because they were within striking distance of the No. 8 seed, the league invited the Pelicans as a bubble team for the season's restart at Disney World.
While the potential of competing for a playoff spot is certainly thrilling for a young New Orleans squad on one hand, it carries risk in this case.
With the coronavirus pandemic still present, the NBA players who will be participating in the season's resumption will have to take very strict precautionary measures to guard against it.
Not only that, but due to the killing of George Floyd in late May, there remains a whole lot of social unrest across the country.
For those reasons, it isn't all rainbows and chocolates for the 22 teams who will be vying for a championship this summer, and Pelicans veteran JJ Redick has made that very clear:
“To say that we have any comfort level would be a lie,” Redick said in a statement, via Malika Andrews of ESPN. “There is no comfort level. We're not with our families; we're not at our homes; we're isolated in a bubble in the middle of a hot spot in the middle of Florida—while there's social unrest going on in the country and we're three months away from potentially the most important election in our lifetimes. So there's all that going on.”
A poignant, powerful statement from JJ Redick: “To say that we have any sort of comfort level, would be a lie. There is no comfort level…” pic.twitter.com/6UR2jKdNaQ
— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) July 3, 2020
The season was put on hiatus after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 back in March, when cases began to surge across America. When the season returns, the Pelicans will have eight games to fight for a playoff spot. They're 28-36 and will be gunning for a shot to be a part of play-in games.
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