Commish snaps back
Fires away after mayor rips Nets tests
NBA commissioner Adam Silver rebuffed a tweet from mayor Bill de Blasio, who criticized the league for testing entire teams for COVID-19 while there are “critically ill patients” who still don’t have access to coronavirus testing.
“It’s unfortunate we’re at this point in society where it’s triage when it comes to testing, which is a fundamental issue obviously as there are insufficient tests,” Silver said on ESPN Wednesday night. “I’d only say in the case of the NBA, we’ve been following the recommendations of public health officials.”
Silver argued that by testing highprofile athletes, the NBA brought more awareness to a growing global pandemic than it would have had it continued to run business as usual.
“I understand there are many sides to these issues, but I also think that by virtue of an NBA player being tested and the kind of attention it brought, my sense was especially among young people in the United States, people were not taking these protocols all that seriously until the NBA did what it did,”
Silver said.
But this didn’t stop de Blasio from blasting the league on Tuesday.
“We wish them a speedy recovery. But, with all due respect, an entire NBA team should NOT get tested for COVID-19 while there are critically ill patients waiting to be tested,” the mayor tweeted. “Tests should not be for the wealthy, but for the sick.
While responding to de Blasio’s comment, Silver also provided specifics on testing: Only eight full NBA teams out of 30 have been tested for the coronavirus, while players on other teams were tested after exhibiting symptoms.
Silver went on to say that the nature in which the league operates puts its players at a unique risk of both contracting and spreading the virus simultaneously.
“This is what led to some of the testing in the league in the first place. You could put our players in a category that some would refer to as ‘super spreaders,’ he said. “That is they are young people who are working in close proximity to each other. They are traveling at great frequency. They are regularly in large groups, including the public. And the young cohort in particular, a large number of them are asymptomatic, and if they do have symptoms, they’re relatively mild.”
What the NBA did was re-route all attention from basketball to the coronavirus outbreak by suspending its season after All-Star Jazz center Rudy Gobert became the first NBA player to test positive. The following day, his teammate, and New York native, Donovan Mitchell became the second player to test positive for COVID-19.
In the ensuing days, five additional players have tested positive for the coronavirus, including four Nets players, one of whom is star forward Kevin Durant, who said Tuesday that he was feeling fine. One of the four Nets is said to be exhibiting symptoms.
Pistons forward Christian Wood also tested positive for the coronavirus.