They ruled with the Blue Jays right, forcing the team to look toward possibly playing elsewhere.

To start the season, several cities have lined up to offer their arenas, including Newark, who used to, of course, host the Nets, Kansas City, Buffalo, Louisville and more.

Remember, the Blue Jays played their home games in Buffalo during the 2020 major league baseball season.

Matt, if they can't play games in Toronto.

I was lobbying for Seattle just because I always lobby for Seattle.

Seattle has to be the place.

But here's the issue.

The issue is that it has to be geographically, especially if they reduced travel with divisional opponents or conference opponents.

This year, it has to be near the other teams that they would play more.

They need to throw that roll out.

Let's go to Seattle.

Seattle is a beautiful city, great fan base and I think it would be a great test.

Similar toe how Oklahoma City or excuse me, the Hornets had to play in Oklahoma City when Hurricane Katrina hit it, gave them a little taste and saw how good the fan base was.

And obviously, they moved the then Seattle SuperSonics toe Oklahoma.

So I think it would be great to be able to get Toronto in Seattle.

Obviously, they're gonna go back to Toronto eventually.

But then maybe they could move a team that's in one of these, um, gross cities in the league to Seattle.

What?

Come on.

Come now, Matt.

There's some pretty girl cities in there.

Not way.

Our good city, all MBA cities or good cities.

That's that's my story.

I'm sticking to it.

Jackie.

What do you think?

Yeah, and we all do love Seattle.

We all have great memories of Seattle, but I'm gonna give you a different answer that initially I was like, Why is Louisville involved in this?

And I did a little research on the person that's pushing.

This is none other than you'll Icis Junior Bridgeman, formerly of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Great trivia question, because he's part of the trade that Karim from the Bucks to the Lakers.

But not only that, I got to know Junior a little bit through some work through the Hall of Fame.

It was on a few committees with him.

He is one of the sharpest people I've been around in basketball.

He's innovative, he's smart, He stands up to people.

He's got great ideas, and he's the one pushing this idea.

In Louisville, of course, he played for Denny Crum at Louisville, so I'm throwing my weight behind Junior Bridgeman.

All right, well, I I hate to break this to you.

I have not heard good things about Louisville being the choice, but we'll see.

It's all still open, I know, but I think you, if anyone could do a junior, can understand money, and they're still counting votes for these counting votes.

There's absolutely still counting votes, and it is interesting this question of geography, right?

So the reason Newark has gained some steam is you could put them in an N B A style arena, and they would just be in that same triangle with the Knicks and the Nets.

And so that if you did have teams in trying to reduce travel in a covert era, coming in to play just sort of a swath of games and they could knock out all three teams without leaving the same hotel or being on the same set of Busses or anything like that.

That would be appealing to the league.

But, Matt, do you really think that the league should consider maybe altering, if not the conference structure for this year?

But the way the Raptors play their games?

I mean, that's what it would take to do Seattle, because you would then have to sort of group the more with Portland in terms of when regional teams came to play them.

And obviously, it would be Western Conference teams more often.

Well, I I just think the way the years been going, I don't think anything should be off the table immediately.

One thing I do have trust us and somehow some way Adam Silver in his committee always seem to get things right.

So I have a lot of confidence that they'll make the right decision.

But I just think as a former player, someone who got a chance to play in Seattle as a visitor, just such a great city, great energy, great restaurants, great view, great fan base and I know that city is thirsty toe have a team, even if it's just for a season.

I like that point to write.

This has been a year of unconventional thinking.

This has been a year where we had a different teams getting into the playoffs in a different way than we've ever had before.

If you're gonna mess with that, maybe it's okay to mess with some of the rotation of division and conference, the number of teams you play the number of times just to get a team over to Seattle for a year.

I'm just saying I'm not ready to give this up either, man.

I'm just saying if the Raptors are displaced, they will be the only team to be based away from home.

So, Jackie, what do you think the biggest disadvantages are for Toronto if they have to play their season at another location, given that there won't be huge amounts of fans in any building, so it's not like just not being near the local fans will be as much of a factor.

Everything.

Think about this now.

The Toronto Raptors had to go to that Orlando bubble early because they were a Canadian team, so they were as hard as it was for everybody else to be in that bubble and all the things that we heard and including some of the stress of the mental health aspect of that.

Now you're gonna ask this team just a couple of months later to now literally move away for a year and go play in another city and just keep on going.

Keep on trucking.

And I think it's a big ask and I understand it's no one's fault.

It's It's the policy of the Canadian government.

But I think it's just a really tough, tough order for the Toronto Raptors to have to do this on the heels of an already very unusual year.

It's a lot to ask.

I could personally assigned some fault over why people don't want people from the United States traveling back and forth to their countries.

But I'm gonna lay off that for the day.

Matt, what do you think?

I definitely think it's a tough call.

People have to understand we're creatures of habit and our habits and habitat has been truly disrupted in 2020 eso.

For them to have to go somewhere else and play, it's gonna be tough away from their family.

But like I said, the mental aspect of the game is a lot.

But the one thing I will say about this team is they're very mentally tough.

There's very mentally tough team and starting with Kyle Lowry and Nick Nurse and it goes down the line.

So if any team can relocate and still salvage and have a very solid season, I feel like the Toronto Raptors could do that.

I do believe that with you as well I do.

And I mean, I don't think they'd have to be away from their families.

I think the idea is that their families would come relocate with, um, But again, every branch of the tree has a bunch of more sprouts.

That means kids have to be in new schools, right?

It means right.

Jackie and Rachel, you kids.

Yeah.

I mean, Rachel, you have kids school age kids.

How would you like to tear your kids away for a year to Newark and then have them?

You don't have to go back to the Canadian School.

That's a lot.

That's a lot to ask, and it's really to just like being a free agent on a one year deal.

You know, you never know where you're gonna be next year, and I guess now you're putting the whole team on a free agent Deal s so to speak, you know, I mean, so when you're comfortable in Toronto and then next year, you're on another team.

So this is just a situation where the whole team has to move cities now.

So we still still have some familiarity with their team.

Hopefully their families conjoined.

But like I said, this is a very mentally tough team that starts at the top so they'll be able to figure it out.

It is the lateness, Jackie noted.

This is because of the Canadian.

But it's not an MBA issue.

It's nothing that the n B A could just solve and decide, like we're not gonna make the Raptors do this.

It is because the Canadian government, like so many other governments around the world, have said, Hey, the way the United States has handled its coronavirus problems is not the same as we have.

And we don't want people coming back and forth across the border without a two week, 14 day in home quarantine.

Thanks for watching ESPN on YouTube for live streaming sports and premium content.