Who has not yet, who wants to do it again?

In normal times, this question-clad invitation sounds at fairgrounds to encourage people to have fun.

In times of the pandemic and the looming omicron misery, the saying becomes the motivational motto of the hour in American basketball.

While the professional ice hockey league NHL is interrupting its season because the teams are dropping out in a row, the NBA wants to continue over Christmas, in full halls and at popular television times.

But because around 100 basketball professionals came into contact with the corona virus or with infected people, the decimated teams have to provide additional staff as quickly as possible so that they can get eight people together and not miss more than nine league games. And at this point at the latest the whole thing starts to get pretty crazy. To put it bluntly, everyone who can run, dribble and throw a ball to some extent is now obliged to do so. A “2 G plus” rule applies: the helpers in the Omikron emergency should be healthy, as cheap as possible and tested negative.

The NBA has even made substitute workers a temporary rule: If you have two professionals who have tested positive in your squad, you have to sign at least one new player;

if you are missing three professionals, you have to organize two temporary workers, and so on.

In the course of this, the salary caps are suspended.

But because a bloated squad is permanently expensive, the rule is blooming: Teams give players who have a certain talent a series of contracts for ten days.

"A surreal fun"

Short-term contracts for weeks and months are not uncommon in basketball, even in this country.

But ten-day laborers?

Around fifty of them are currently in the NBA.

Most (six) with the Dallas Mavericks and Orlando Magic, four with the Brooklyn Nets, where stars Kevin Durant and the unvaccinated Kyrie Irving are currently out.

On the one hand, young professionals are now being hurriedly brought into the NBA selection by the farm teams, and on the other hand, veterans like 40-year-old Joe Johnson are being reactivated. The seven-time all-star had not played in the NBA for three years, on Wednesday he was signed out of retirement from his former club, the Boston Celtics, and was used against the Cleveland Cavaliers that evening. The fans were enthusiastic, Johnson found everything “surreal”, but also “fun”.

Transferred to the Bundesliga, the “fun” could look like this: If FC Bayern, Borussia Dortmund or VfB Stuttgart ran out of licensed players in a second half of the season overshadowed by Omikron, they would have to organize without a club.

Sascha Mölders, just separated from 1860 Munich, could help out at Bayern, Neven Subotic back to BVB and Holger Badstuber to Stuttgart.

Granted, that sounds absurd and ridiculous, and not just because the labor market in America is more flexible.

The question, however, remains whether the NBA is cutting its own flesh with its quick action.

When the basketball fans soberly discover at Christmas that behind a well-known start team there is only a B-selection of youngsters and old men.