Adam Silver on NBA’s return after coronavirus: ‘We are not in a position to make any decisions’
The NBA, like sports leagues everywhere, wants to get back to business after suspending operations last month due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
League commissioner Adam Silver, however, still isn’t sure when that will be.
“We are not in a position to make any decisions, and it’s unclear when we will be,” Silver said on Friday afternoon, via Yahoo Sports’ Vincent Goodwill.
The league suspended operations on March 11, just moments after Utah Jazz veteran Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus. Numerous other players and staff members across the NBA have since tested positive, too. Silver confirmed that more than seven players had tested positive for the coronavirus on Friday, too, but declined to identify them. Some of those players have made themselves known, including Donovan Mitchell, Kevin Durant and others.
Everything is on the table for the NBA
Currently, the league has no legitimate plan in place for a possible return this season.
Several ideas for ways to salvage the season in some form have been floated in recent weeks, including holding games in empty arenas, jumping right to the postseason, or even holding the games in isolation in one location like Las Vegas or Walt Disney World — though Silver said Friday that the league is not seriously engaged in discussions about holding games in isolation.
[ Coronavirus: How the sports world is responding to the pandemic ]
But with the coronavirus still raging — there were more than 681,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States as of Friday afternoon, according to The New York Times, and more than 31,000 deaths attributed to it — no vaccine, which isn’t expected anytime soon, or testing that’s widely available, it’s hard to see the NBA resuming play anytime soon.
Silver said that Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed him and the board of governors at their annual meeting on Friday, too, and told them that it’s “about the data and not the date” when deciding when play can resume.
Silver also quoted Disney exec Bob Iger, who addressed NBA board of governors today. Iger told them, "It’s about the data and not the date." Silver added, "That is going to be my answer to all of you when you ask me similar questions." https://t.co/jJJv7NWilM
— Howard Beck (@HowardBeck) April 17, 2020
At this point, Silver said he simply isn’t ready to lay out a plan for any sort of return. He made clear, though, that he is not “sending a signal” about canceling the season. Everything is on the table, he said, including resuming the regular season, jumping right to the postseason and even pushing back the start of next season.
The league has not set a hard date to decide that it must cancel the season, either.
“I don’t mean to send any signals on the likelihood or not of restarting the season,” Silver said, via USA Today’s Mark Medina. “All I can say is we’re still at a point where we don’t have enough information.”
Silver: ‘Our revenue in essence has dropped to zero’
A major part of the meetings with owners on Friday was about the financial aspect of the shutdown.
With no games being played, Silver said, “our revenue in essence has dropped to zero.”
“It’s having a huge financial impact on the TV side of the business and the arena business,” Silver said, via Sopan Dep of The New York Times. “And, of course, it’s part of our jobs to project out into the future what that will mean for the NBA and the team business as we go out into the summer and then out into the fall.
“And there is a strong recognition that there are thousands of jobs impacted by the NBA, not just the ones that fans see, meaning players and the basketball staff, but when you include the day of game arena workers, the NBA is responsible for roughly 55,000 jobs ... I think it’s why the league is as — our obligation — to the extent that we can resume play in a safe way, to look at every potential way of doing so and that’s what we’re doing now. It frustrates me that I’m not able to say that if we do A, B and C, therefore, we can jump the ball. But we just, as I’ve said, don’t have enough information to do that.”
The league and the NBA Players Association reached an agreement on Friday for a 25 percent pay cut for all players starting on May 15. Both sides have been in discussions about possible pay cuts for quite some time. The league reportedly asked for a 50 percent pay reduction for players in April. NBA executives have reportedly taken a 20 percent pay reduction, too.
“Through this agreement, and in order to provide players with a more gradual salary reduction schedule, partial reductions of 25 percent will begin with the players’ twice-a-month payment due on May 15,” the NBA and NBPA said in a statement on Friday.
“The CBA stipulates that the compensation of all NBA roster players shall be reduced in the event of a ‘force majeure’ event, such as an epidemic or government order, in accordance with a formula based on the number of games missed.”
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