Shellcom Sendai Stadium, Japan
The majority of the US sports media landscape and fandom is full of well-meaning people who, for whatever reason, don't spend much time on global politics. Just like most Americans, most US sports fans and personalities believe that the US is, if not the best country (not many people really feeling that these days), at least a Respectable Country, one that is somewhere fighting in the pack, maybe challenging for a division title. So when they see sports opening up in Germany, in South Korea, in New Zealand, they see the US's reopen as a reasonable option. Over the past month, as various leagues have begun to promise reopens, media people have been going along, reporting on exciting updates, and American fans have been excitedly chattering about what’s going to happen with their favorite players and teams in the re-starts. I don't blame folks for being un-aware of the US’s standing in the world, of assuming that the US is a normal nation, we all have limited attentions. But as the daily numbers of Covid cases continue to bloom, it’s clear: reopening US sports could feasibly happen, but a safe reopen was never going to happen.
It feels weird to continually modify "sports" with "US" and "American" because for most of my life, sports has been a relatively fluid entity, one that crosses borders easily. But the distinction matters. The US in 2020 is not a Respectable Country, and the Covid pandemic is going to really bring that to bear for some people. Our country is full of wonderful people, but we have an absolutely decrepit government, our infrastructures of care and support are woefully underfunded, and we are a populace with way more anti-science, suspicious, know-nothings than the average nation in 2020. This is the background environment in which every American league's decisions have been made, whether any league wishes to acknowledge it or not. This has arguably been the environment in this country for decades.
Given that context, there are some arguments going around along the lines of "maybe games shouldn't return, but hey, players want it too, it's all about the money." This language has the trappings of being about Player Empowerment, but it dangerously occludes a callous and bloodthirsty logic. Workers need money to live, this is hardly enlightening. “The workers need the money” is used to justify sweatshops and sulfur mining or other unsafe workplaces. There are people working jobs right now who would rather be at home distancing, but they need to pay rent so they are working for Amazon. Desperation is a bad guide, and a worse guard. There are more than enough resources available to ensure that every athlete and worker in sports is compensated to stay safe at home, and framing the choice to re-open on the simple vector of desperation is a bad idea.
Asking athletes to decide if leagues should reopen is an poor method of determining player safety. Regulation of workplace safety is predicated on the idea that while workers have some personal responsibility to behave safely at work, it is functionally impossible for the worker to know every aspect of what is needed to have a safe environment *and* do their job. Furthermore, history has shown that, when it comes to ensuring worker safety vs. increasing profits, employers are not the most trustworthy class of actors. This is why third-party regulators are needed. The fact that US sports leagues have no regulatory presence is duly noted, but the role of a fan, and a citizen, is not to simply accept that fact. Personally, I care immensely about the safety of these athletes who I've loved watching compete. I see no contradiction in my demands that the leagues protect these players, even if it means not playing the games. The entire idea of sports is that it's a celebration of human excellence, of people performing at the peak of their talents. Forcing people to risk a viral infection to play sports is antithetical to the idea of games as expressions of health, and to the idea that athletes have inherent value as human beings.
I am too familiar with US history to think that these leagues will easily reconsider their plans. US workplace safety protections have been bad for far longer than basketball's been around. I have no illusions: there are vast forces of money and law that are pushing for these workers (not just athletes!) to be exposed. Of all the US leagues, the NBA appears to have put the most money and thinking into creating a safe zone, but it would be the first time in history that money and clever thinking were able to defeat the logic of a pandemic. There's no hard line where an organization "doing their best in unprecedented times" becomes "a Pollyanna ignoring material conditions," and I'm not sure it's worth getting into the nitty-gritty arguments of when it exactly happens, especially when it comes to sports. We can just stop playing that game of of chicken with athletes’ lives. I don't know what the point of a being a sports fan is if it's not stand up and yell for what you believe in and what you love. I believe in US athletes, and I love them. These reopens don't have to happen, and I hope they don’t.