Adam Silver says expectation is no decision on remainder of NBA season will be made in April
There still plenty of uncertainty surrounding the remainder of the 2019-20 NBA season.
In a Monday night interview with TNT’s “Inside the NBA” host Ernie Johnson that was broadcast on the NBA’s Twitter account, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said he feels like he knows less about a possible restart to the season now than he did on March 11 when the season was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Essentially, what I’ve told my folks over the last week is that we should just accept, that at least for the month of April, we won’t be in a position to make any decision,” Silver said to Johnson. “I don’t think that necessarily means on May 1, we will be.
“It doesn’t mean that internally that both the league and in discussions with our players and the teams that we aren’t looking at many different scenarios for restarting the season. But I think it honestly is too early, given what’s happening right now, to even be able to project or predict where we’ll be in a few weeks.”
With a decision on the remainder of the NBA season not coming until May at the earliest and team facilities closed to players and staff indefinitely, Silver added there has been no decision made on the possibility of completing the regular season before beginning the playoffs if play is resumed in the coming months.
“In a perfect world, yes we would try to finish the regular season in some form and then move on to the playoffs,” Silver said. “I think initially for the first two weeks, we were looking at more specific scenarios in terms of if we start this date, what would that mean for the regular season, when would the playoffs begin, when would they conclude. What I’ve learned over the last few weeks is that we just have too little information to make those sort of projections.”
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But Silver admitted “there does come a point in which we would start impacting next season” if the shutdown extends too deep into the summer months.
The league is considering different scenarios to finish the 2019-20 season, including playing games with no fans in attendance. The possibility of fanless games were already being discussed as a way to continue the season prior to the NBA’s decision to suspend play last month.
“Players’ safety and the health of everyone in the NBA family has to come first,” Silver said. “That may mean that there’s a scenario that we could play without fans. That’s something that we look a lot at. ... How would those games be televised? Would we still play in huge NBA arenas or would we go to practice facilities? Would we go to a single site?”
According to ESPN, single-site ideas that have been discussed by NBA players and executives include using a casino property in Las Vegas, one that’s big enough to host everything in a single location. Another suggestion is to play in the Bahamas, where a resort like Atlantis had courts constructed in ballrooms.
The Chinese Basketball Association, which is still working to restart its season after the outbreak shut down play in January, has also considered “clustering teams in one or two cities” to create a bubble that keeps the league away from the coronavirus, according to ESPN.
“There has been a lot of conjecture about various cities and places that might hold a tournament,” Silver said. “We’re in listening mode right now. We’ve been contacted by many of those jurisdictions to ask what out level of interest is and we’ve talked to them about what their capabilities are. But once again, there’s just too much unknown right now.
“The health of everyone involved in the NBA — our players, coaches and anyone who is on the front line — has to come first.”
According to ESPN, officials within the NBA and NBA Players Association have recently been collaborating in assessing the viability of multiple blood-testing devices for the coronavirus that could provide accurate results within minutes. Some view establishing a reliable test that offers immediate results as one of the big steps toward resuming play in the coming months.
As for the Saturday call with President Donald Trump that included sports commissioners from across the country, Silver described it as an “old-school conference call” that lasted about 45 minutes and “was more just a chance for us to say we stand behind the country.”
“Sports, collectively, in essence led the way of shutting down,” Silver said. “It’s something I said when we were all on the call with the President this weekend, and I know all the leagues share this view, that we would love to be part of the movement to restart the economy. But of course, that can’t come in any way that would compromise safety.”
