Silver hopeful for gradual fan increase
With the Rockets among a small percentage of NBA teams that will host fans at home games this season, league commissioner Adam Silver was not entirely comfortable with considering it an “experiment” but admitted there could be a need to see how health and safety protocols will work.
“I’d say it sounds more concerning when you define it as an experiment, although I recognize it is of sorts,” Silver said. “I’d only say that given the dramatically reduced numbers of fans that we’re going to have in our arenas to start that I think there is — it’s not as if there isn’t any science around the physical distancing of people and mask wearing, even in indoor facilities, particularly when those fans will not be eating and drinking in their seats.”
The Rockets will allow up to 25 percent capacity at Toyota Center for home games, beginning with Wednesday’s season opener against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Among the series of health and safety protocols, fans are required to wear masks at all times, other than when “actively eating or drinking.” Fans within 30feet of the court are not permitted to eat or drink.
Utah, New Orleans, Cleveland and Toronto (playing in Tampa, Fla.) will al-
so allow limited numbers of fans.
“It’s a recognition by the league office that one-sizefits-all solutions don’t necessarily make sense given the varied conditions across the country,” Silver said. “At least for now, we’re satisfied that these decisions are best made market by market in conjunction with local health authorities that at least ultimately have to sign off on allowing fans into arenas.
“Circumstances could change very quickly in this country or in a particular location. I think in that case, we and the teams are in constant touch with those local health authorities just to make sure that they are comfortable with what we’re doing. It’s my sense that once we do begin games with fans that local
health authorities, national for that matter, will be paying a lot of attention to it, and I think to the extent that they see practices that either they think should be accentuated or other things that we should be modifying, we will hear directly from them.”
If there were no fans in arenas this season, it would cost the league roughly 40 percent of its revenue, Silver said. He said he is hoping that success in the few markets allowing fans will lead to fans in more buildings.
“We’re excited to learn from those experiences, and it may be that once some teams do it and it’s demonstrated it can be done in a safeway for all the participants, it will cause some public health officials to maybe rethink, sort of, the rules in place in their markets. And even some teams that currently could allow fans but at least haven’t decided to do so yet might also be more open to bringing some fans into their buildings,” he said.
“I think if everything went according to plan, it sounds like a March-April time period would be around when general fans — frankly, people like us — would potentially be eligible to get vaccinated. But I think a lot has to work really well for that to happen, and so we certainly didn’t go into the season froman economic standpoint banking on having full arenas.”
The league’s efforts to play a season outside the bubble environment that worked sowell after last season’s restart would similarly benefit greatly from widespread availability of vaccines. NBA players, however, will remain well down the list of demographic groups scheduled to receive vaccinations.
“In no form or way will we jump the line. We will wait our turn to get the vaccine,” Silver said. “When you think about the logistical feat that now the federal and state governments are undertaking, where if every citizen ultimately requires two doses and with a population of over 300 million, it’s beyond comprehension when you start to begin to think about the logistical challenges of transporting and distributing this vac-
cine.”
The NBA has not established guidelines for how many positive cases would lead to the postponement of scheduled games or a stoppage of the season as a whole. Only the first half of the 72-game schedules was released to allow for postponed games to be made up, a clear indication of the potential perils with conducting a season while the number of COVID-19 cases has spiked.
“We’re confident that we can do it, and if we weren’t, we wouldn’t have started,” Silver said. “I will say, though, that we do anticipate that there will be bumps in the road along the way.
“While it’s true we made it through the bubble without any cases … we didn’t think that it was necessarily going to be that successful when we went in. It was something new, something that had not been done at that scope and magnitude before. I think we have some of the same trepidation going into the season.”
The commissioner is also hopeful about the endeavor, including that the experiences the Rockets and other teams have with fans in the arenas will allow more clubs to follow that example.
“It’s a huge priority to get fans back in the arenas, but wewant to be realistic about it,” Silver said. “It’s my sense that we’re going to learn a lot once we have regularseason games with fans there. There’s all these very new issues for us. I think that as we get our sea legs, with some teams bringing in fans, other markets see the success, we hope, of bringing in at least an acceptable number of fans early in the season, that it’ll mean that we can begin having more fans in our buildings.”