Discussions have been had about the possibility of Louisville serving as a temporary home for the Toronto Raptors during the upcoming NBA season, according to Yahoo’s Vincent Goodwill.
Per Goodwill, the potential stems from former NBA player and now-businessman Junior Bridgeman having contacted the NBA to bring attention to the fact that Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center is NBA-ready.
Canada and the United States agreed to close the border for non-essential travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic back in March, and on Monday that agreement was extended until at least Nov. 21. Due to the restrictions, Toronto-based teams such as the Blue Jays and Toronto FC have had to play their home games out-of-country, in Buffalo and East Hartford, Connecticut, respectively.
If those same restrictions continue to be implemented into the forthcoming NBA season, the Raptors, too, may be forced to play somewhere other than Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena.
The league has yet to make any official decisions about the 2020-21 campaign, and is still in the process of figuring out the salary cap, the opening date for free agency and a myriad of other topics.
Commissioner Adam Silver has reiterated several times over the past few months that the league’s decisions will be necessarily be determined by the novel coronavirus.
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