Report: NBA Teams Preparing for 2020 Draft Sans In-Person Interviews, Workouts

Several NBA teams are reportedly preparing for the 2020 NBA draft under the expectation the combine and other in-person workouts and interviews will be canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein reported Saturday the only contact those organizations expect with top prospects before the draft, which is scheduled for June 25, will be Skype meetings.

The NBA hasn't announced any updated plans for the 2020 draft process as it attempts to determine whether it can finish the 2019-20 season, which may force the entire calendar to get altered.

In addition, it's unclear if the draft will happen at the Barclays Center in New York City or whether fans will be permitted to attend the marquee offseason event. The NFL announced Monday it's going forward with its draft in Las Vegas in late April, but all public events with fans involved were canceled.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver told ESPN's Rachel Nichols on Wednesday the current focus is options to resume the season and perhaps a short-term charity game to benefit coronavirus relief efforts:

"What are the conditions we need for the league to restart? I would say I'm looking at three different things. One is, when can we restart and operate as we've known it with 19,000 fans in buildings? ... Option two is, should we consider restarting without fans, and what would that mean? Because, presumably, if we had a group of players, and staff around them, and you could test them and follow some sort of protocol, doctors and health officials may say it's safe to play.

"A third option that we are looking at now ... the impact on the national psyche of having no sports programming on television. And one of the things we've been talking about are, are there conditions in which a group of players could compete—maybe it's for a giant fundraiser or just the collective good of the people—where you take a subset of players and, is there a protocol where they can be tested and quarantined and isolated in some way, and they could compete against one another? Because people are stuck at home, and I think they need a diversion. They need to be entertained."

This year's draft class could be particularly difficult to evaluate without the combine and further in-person workouts since several high-profile prospects, including LaMelo Ball, Deni Avdija, Theo Maledon and James Wiseman, have extremely limited or no college basketball experience.

The remainder of the 2019-20 college basketball campaign, including the 2020 NCAA tournament, was canceled because of the coronavirus.