2020 Olympics Postponement Does Not Bode Well For LA Clippers Season

It was announced Tuesday morning in a joint statement by the International Olympic Committee that the 2020 Summer Olympics will be postponed due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. What does this mean for the Clippers season?

Originally slated to start on July 24, 2020, in Japan the Summer Olympics have been postponed until further notice- likely until the summer of 2021. As businesses and major sports everywhere are being canceled or postponed around the world this does not look good for a return of the 2019-2020 NBA Season.

An event as large as the Olympics with a gathering of athletes from all around the world being canceled four months in advance is a very telling sign.

Fans have been waiting for some kind of return date for the NBA season since it was shut down on March 11th after Utah Jazz center tested positive for the novel Coronavirus. Speculations have been floated that it would be a six-week postponement, that number has seemed more and more ambitious as new updates come in about the virus and the continued outbreak globally.

There have been lots of questions as to whether or not the season will resume with the remaining regular-season schedule or have teams jump straight into the playoffs. The question now, however, is becoming will it come back at all this year? The answer to that is looking more and more likely not. No reports as of yet, but it is a safe assumption that league officials have a date in mind to make the decision to cancel this season altogether, and the news of the Olympics might mean that date is closer than one might think.

The LA Clippers’ last game was on March 10th in San Francisco- the Clippers had a dominating win over the Warriors with a 131-107 final score. If the season is to be canceled altogether the 2019-2020 Clippers could be one of the biggest ‘what if’ stories in NBA history. LA has, arguably, the best roster in franchise history, and seemed to be hitting a real stride just before the season’s postponement. Sitting fairly comfortably in the second-seed in the Western Conference, the team was chasing its first title in the 50th year of the Clippers’ existence.

With only one more realistic year left on Kawhi Leonard‘s and Paul George‘s contracts and the addition of Montrezl Harrell and Reggie Jackson becoming free agents in the summer of 2020 a full cancellation would surface some very real questions about what the roster could look like next year. With no current reports from the league’s office, it leaves us with nothing more than questions and speculation.