This archive report was first published on 19 May 2020.
As the world slowly returns to normal, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James is eager to get back to basketball. Speaking on the "WRTS: After Party" programme on the Uninterrupted multi-media platform on May 18, 2020, James expressed his desire to resume the NBA season, but only if the health of players and their families is not endangered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Definitely not giving up on the season," James said, whose Lakers led the Western Conference when the NBA suspended play on March 11, 2020 after Utah Jazz centre Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus.
The NBA, along with other major sports leagues, is still formulating plans to return to action. Germany's Bundesliga became the first top European football league to resume after a two-month hiatus, while NASCAR and golf have also started to re-emerge.
"Not only myself and my teammates, the Lakers organization, we want to play," James said. "There's a lot of players that I know personally that want to play. And obviously, we don't ever want to jeopardize the health of any of our players or any of the players' families and so on and so on.
"This is a pandemic that we have no idea -- we can't control it," James said. "We're going to listen to the people that's been following this pandemic, following the numbers, following the data."
