With so much uncertainty, society is craving some type of game plan, or light at the end of the tunnel, as to when we’ll get sports back.
We don’t have that however, and frustration is growing among NBA owners who find themselves powerless as the league is paused due to coronavirus concerns.
After his regularly scheduled Board of Governors meeting with team owners Friday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver stressed that it’s not about having a concrete date for a return, but concrete data.
In other words, it’s not up to the NBA. And the commissioner thinks frontline medical workers should take priority before sports come back.
“We are not in a position to make any decisions and it’s unclear when we will be,” Silver said, via The Athletic’s Shams Charania.
The factors they’re paying attention to are the rates of new infections, the availability of large-scale testing, potential vaccines and anti-virals. And of course, recommendations from healthcare officials.
Before resuming, the NBA is looking for:
– New infections coming down
– Availability of testing on a large scale
– The path that we’re on for potentially a vaccine
– Anti-virals“We’re not even at the point where we can say, ‘If only A, B and C were met, there’s a clear path.’"
— Tom Westerholm (@Tom_NBA) April 17, 2020
As the league’s revenue essentially has dropped to zero, financials and the roughly 55,000 jobs the NBA provides were brought up at the meeting. But public health is the top priority.
“My sense of the NBA team owners is that if they can be part of a movement to restart out economy, they almost view that as a civic obligation. However there is no appetite to compromise the health and safety of our players,” Silver said, via ESPN’s Rachel Nichols.
In conclusion, we’re still all in limbo, and it’s going to stay that way for the immediate future.
It’s a little unsettling for the rest of us that an enterprise as large as the NBA doesn’t have any idea when it will return, but these are the times we’re living in.
