All right Tim, good to have you on here. I realize that we've been attempting to actually like have a phone conversation and we haven't been able to connect so this seems as good of place to any to catch up finally.

Absolutely. It's fun to be on with you for a minute while and thanks in advance for the work you're doing both giving me basketball stuff to listen to and with the coronavirus pod. So thanks for that.

Well, thank you. And likewise, part of the reason I wanted to have you on was to talk about your work with Brian Winhorse on what the NBA is doing to try to get back to actually playing games. So just as a general overview, how would you characterize the state of their efforts right now to get back to play?

I would say Nate that the league is really focused on trying to find a way to finish out this season, right? And I think that goes for both the league and the players.

Both sides want to get back on the court. They want to generate the revenue that would come from getting back on the court. And I think everybody genuinely wants to finish out the season, right?

Like the NBA, I think in its whole history going back to 1946 or 2007, whatever year officially started with the BAA. It's always had a champion. It's always finished its season. Even when there was lockout short and seasons.

I think the league would like to be able to say that it finished out this season and had a champion, especially since it got through three quarters of the regular season, right? It's not like situation like baseball or maybe football in the fall where you haven't started your season yet. The NBA is almost all the way to the end of the regular season as we both know, or at least within sight of the finish line anyway.

I think everybody is committed to trying to find the optimal way forward to allow for the season to finish out and for things to progress, at least somewhat like they were supposed to.

As best as you're able to understand, I know some of this is going back over what you had in that article. But what do you think is their best thought right now on what that plan would consist of?

Well, I mean, it's a little complicated because there's so much we don't know right now about what the kind of, and you know this better than anybody, what the track of this virus is going to be, right?

And I think really that is kind of the guiding principle of all of this is that the league has made it very clear that they're not going to come back before, at least wherever they're playing, there's enough of a, there's enough infrastructure in place from a testing standpoint,

a public health standpoint to withstand them being able to play, right? And so for me, the first thing I look at every day is Nate Silver puts out a tweet sometime in the five o'clock hour with the information from the COVID-19 tracker site that has the daily number of tests recorded in it.

And that to me is the key number for anybody who wants to have basketball or any other sport come back. And I know you obviously focus on this a ton on the COVID pod, but I think that is the number that the NBA is looking at more than anything else.

And if that number, you know, right now it's in the 300,000 range, I think it's starting to creep into that range every day anyway. That needs to get a lot higher. I think before the NBA comes back, but beyond that, what seems pretty clear is that if this is going to happen, whether it's going to be in a single site or maybe in a couple of sites,

this is going to be a very limited situation in terms of the number of places the league is going to be set up. This isn't going to be while your team is going to come back and be playing at home and they're arena, even with no fans or playing in the practice facilities.

It seems very likely this is going to be some kind of a centralized situation where you can bring, you know, whether it's, you know, eight or 10 or 15 or 30 or whatever, how many teams together in one spot to both limit the amount of travel the teams have to make.

And also to allow for as, you know, as structured of a situation as possible to do the requisite testing and have the necessary measures to keep the virus out and allow for play to continue.

Yeah, you mentioned this idea that they're they'll need 15,000 tests if they're going to have just a box. Yeah, no, I just was going to say, just be clear, I, Adrian actually is the one who reported that.

Oh, by the idea, just just want to give him credit for it. But yeah, that you see said he said a couple of times that the league thinks it needs to have 15,000 tests to pull whatever they decide to pull off off.

Yeah, and you mentioned the idea of the national testing and I thought it was interesting though that especially in Orlando, which is one of the places they're talking about doing this potentially what Walt Disney World.

There's been a lot of enthusiasm by the authorities. It seems like where it's like, yes, hey anyone who wants to test can get one here and the magic of now tested asymptomatic people.

They've also it seems like the leaks new policy and you correct me if I'm wrong here is well, if the jurisdiction says that they have enough tests where it's okay to test asymptomatic people where, you know, because then once you get to asymptomatic people, you're basically going into, you know, there isn't a clinic.

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