NBA commissioner Adam Silver held his annual midseason press conference Saturday afternoon.
But there was nothing usual about some of the questions he had to answer this year.
It's been nearly one year since the league paused its season due to COVID-19, but it still feels the impact of the virus. Silver hopes that next season will get them back on track.
"Frankly I'm fairly optimistic at this point, that we will be able to start on time," the commissioner told reporters. "Half of our teams have fans in arenas right now and, and if vaccines continue on the pace they are and they continue to be as effective as they have been against the virus and its variants, we're hopeful that we'll have relatively full arenas next season as well."
Silver did say there currently are no plans for international travel until the 2022-23 season at the earliest. But other than that, ruling out any changes in the way things are trending, NBA playoff games will be played at teams' home arenas.
"I feel pretty good that we're going to continue a pace and by the time we reach the playoffs in mid-May, things will even be considerably better than they are now, and also, obviously, at least here in the United States, we've been making excellent progress in terms of vaccinations, and that will be very helpful in getting people back in the arenas."
To his knowledge, Silver says no player has been vaccinated. Some coaches were age-appropriate in their home states and certain team doctors and healthcare personnel have qualified, though.
Additionally, Silver sees a way to bring fans back to arenas without mandating vaccines for anyone.
"We have no plans to mandate the players get vaccinated," Silver said. "I don't see every player needing to get vaccinated as an impediment to fans returning to the arena, no more do I think the fact that every fan won't be vaccinated is an impediment to fans coming back to the arena. I think it's a combination of vaccines, antibodies, herded immunity in communities, proper safety and cleanliness protocols -- we'll be able to return to something that looks a lot closer than normal beginning next season. At least based on the information available to me today."
This is good news, as we're another day closer to normalcy. You can watch the entire press conference here.
