An NBA champion will be crowned this fall under the most unique circumstances in league history, assuming everything goes right in this ambitious plan by Adam Silver and Co. In October, he’ll grab a microphone and address a crowd that doesn’t exist, awarding a Larry O’Brien Trophy that won’t have a physical asterisk on it, but it’ll be there.
Not the level of asterisk that some believe accompany baseball records or the ones that Phil Jackson assigned to title-winning teams when he wasn’t coaching, but there will be a symbolic one at the end of this odyssey.
The asterisk will only be there to mark this time and place in history, not as a claim that the champion didn’t earn its honor.