NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Friday spoke to the media after a board of governors meeting with team owners, but didn’t have much of an update on when or if the league will return.
But everything is on the table, as the NBA feels a social responsibility to resume play and restart the economy. Even if they potentially have to delay the start of next season, Silver said “if there’s an opportunity to resume play, we should be modeling it.”
But when it comes to some proposed “bubble scenarios,” that have come forward in the last few days, Silver said no serious conversations have been had.
“Many of them have been proposed to us and we’ve only listened. We’re not seriously engaged yet in that type of environment because I can’t answer the question of what we’d need to see in terms of health and safety of everyone involved,” Silver said, via ESPN’s Rachel Nichols.
The idea of finishing out the season in a centralized location was adopted from some plans of action the the Chinese Basketball Association was considering for its own return. Las Vegas was an area that was floated, and Disney World seemed to be a workable solution should the NBA opt for that route.
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In fact, Disney CEO Bob Iger partook in the video conference with NBA owners, in addition to infectious disease specialist Dr. David Ho.
“It’s about the data and not the date,” Iger said, relayed by Silver.
As bad as we want sports back, it’s not as simple as having every player pick up and move to Disney World for a little while. Widespread testing and a decrease in new infections are only a few things that need to happen before anything can be rolled out.
Would players be able to bring their families? What happens if some didn’t feel comfortable with it? With everything new learned about COVID-19 each day, the questions that needed to be raised haven’t even been thought of yet.
It would be a lot nicer if we had an actual concrete time to look forward to, but everything is at the mercy of the virus.
