The rest of the NBA season may be cancelled due to coronavirus, but the Phoenix Suns intend to play things out by streaming the remainder of their games in NBA 2K20 on Twitch. The NBA announced that it would halt the 2020 basketball season earlier this week, after Utah Jazz player Ruby Gobert tested positive for COVID-19.
As the coronavirus continues to spread, causing thousands of deaths and many more infections, it was recently declared a global pandemic. In an effort to slow the spread of the disease, events across the entertainment world that would have brought large crowds together are being cancelled. In addition to the NBA cancelling the rest of its season, the MLB and NFL have also announced that their seasons are coming to an early end. The most significant closure for the gaming industry so far was the March 11th cancellation of E3 2020.
While the NBA season is put on hold to protect players, fans, and all the workers who might be put at risk by large crowds, the Phoenix Suns have found a way to finish out their schedule, at least in some sense. In a tweet yesterday evening, the Phoenix Suns announced that they will play the rest of their games for this season in NBA 2K20 and stream them on Twitch. The first virtual game of the season will be against the Dallas Mavericks. The announcement from the Suns was short on details, with no information about when or where the streams will be hosted, or how exactly the games will play out. It’s most likely that the team will simply use NBA 2K20 to simulate the games without any human players.The Suns do have at least one avid streamer in Devin Booker, who actually found out about the season’s cancellation while streaming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, if they wanted to get more hands on.
With lots of people under quarantine or voluntarily staying in to avoid the spread of coronavirus, streamers may have an opportunity to both gain a larger audience than they usually have and help make the period of isolation a little easier on their viewers. Some internet service providers are even suspending data caps temporarily as customers will likely be using much more data than usual. Users on some online platforms are taking things even further, with the World Health Organization using TikTok to help educate users about coronavirus safety.
The COVID-19 outbreak has much more serious consequences than the NBA season’s cancellation, but having even something as small as an NBA 2K20 Twitch stream to look forward to can be great for mental health during times as stressful as this. All the extra time Twitch streamers are about to have on their hands could lead to some more novel uses of the platform, too, like the recent rise in sleepover streams.
NBA 2K20 is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
Source: Phoenix Suns/Twitter