Constant testing vital for league to restart
Commissioner Silver’s vision will see games played in empty arenas in Orlando, Vegas
It’s simple common sense that the post-coronavirus world is going to be a lot different than what we’re used to.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has a pretty good idea of what the NBA will look like when it gets back on the court and he wants the players to be prepared for it.
So it was a no-holds-barred Silver who joined the Players Association conference call this past week to spell out the future, as tough as it might be to hear for all those affected.
The details of the call were revealed by a number of media outlets with Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN providing the bulk of them and the earliest revelations.
It starts with a post-pandemic NBA playing games in front of empty arenas, both as they (hopefully) finish off 2019-20, but also likely into 2020-21.
Silver warned players to plan for some very tough times ahead for a league that pulls in 40 per cent of its revenue from gate receipts.
He didn’t spell out how it would affect salary caps or how future basketball-related income would be affected, but left the impression that the current agreement between the players and the league wouldn’t be sufficient to deal with the expected losses.
“The CBA was not built for extended pandemics,” Silver reportedly said on the call.
But the call wasn’t all doom and gloom.
Silver was asked about potential drop dead dates for the resumption of the current season and suggested to the PA that the league was prepared to go well into June, if need be, before making any definitive calls on the resumption of the 2019-20 season.
He said NBA owners remain uniformly interested in seeing a conclusion to the current year.
As for the various scenarios for the league to reopen, Silver suggested it’s probably safest to limit host sites to just one or two in order to protect the players as much as possible. He said Orlando and Las Vegas are the two most likely host sites.
But the major issue facing the NBA, or any other pro sports league, is still testing.
Until they can test and re-test and ensure they’re not bringing anyone carrying the COVID-19
virus into their midst, it’s a losing battle.
The availability of the tests is very much an issue right now, but Silver suggested that in a couple of months time, that wouldn’t be a problem.
The optics of using tests for a professional sports league when front-line health-care workers can’t get them is nothing the
NBA or any pro league wants to deal with.
Silver, according to reports, was confident that wouldn’t be the case when the NBA was ready to resume.
Silver once again reiterated his own belief that the 2020-21 season won’t begin until December.