While expressing a hope that bordered on determination that the NBA would be able to salvage its season in some form, commissioner Adam Silver also said the unknowns in the COVID-19 crisis are greater than even three-plus weeks ago when he suspended the season and that no decisions will be coming soon.
“Essentially, what I’ve told my folks over the last week is that we should just accept that for at least the month of April we won’t be in a position to make any decisions,” Silver said in a Twitter interview with TNT’s Ernie Johnson on Monday. “I don’t think that necessarily means on May 1 we will be.
“That doesn’t mean internally and in our discussions with our players and the league we aren’t looking at many different scenarios for restarting the season. But I think it is just honestly too early, given what is happening right now, to be able to project or predict where we’ll be in a few weeks.”
Silver said he hopes “to try to finish a regular season in some form and then move on to the playoffs” but that the league has not made any decisions.
He said the NBA initially was considering options for regular and postseason schedules based on potential restart days but has learned that even hypotheticals were relying on excessive guesswork.
“We just have too little information to make those sorts of projections,” Silver said. “I will say, though, as we look out into the summer, there does come a point we would start impacting next season. Even there, a few weeks ago nobody thought we were talking about a potential impact on next season independent on what we might choose to do to finish our regular season and playoffs.
“I don’t want to leave anybody under the impression we’re not trying to do everything we possibly can under the right circumstances. Player safety and the health of everyone in the NBA family has to come first. That may mean there is a scenario we can play without fans. That’s something we look a lot at.”
The league, Silver said, has investigated what that would entail, including how such games would be televised and where they would be played. Many jurisdictions have contacted the NBA about potentially hosting games if the league opts to play at a single site.
“Once again,” he said, “there is just too much unknown right now.”
Yet Silver said that when he and other sports commissioners had a conference call with President Donald Trump, there was a universal hope they could be a part of restarting the economy both directly and symbolically.
“That can’t come in a way that would compromise safety,” Silver said. “I think we also have to recognize it’s a public health matter to shut down the economy and to leave tens of millions of Americans unemployed. It’s a public health matter to isolate people, all done for a good reason right now. Health and safety have to come before any commercial interest.
“There’s no doubt at this point as a country we’re following the right course.”
Silver cited how much has changed from early March and even from March 11, when he called for the league to shut down after its initial positive test, teaching him not to attempt to make predictions.
“Where will be in May?” Silver said. “Beyond the virtue of crowning a champion, what will the symbolism be of major league sports starting back up in this country? What came back from all the leagues collectively was once we get the all-clear, however that is determined by public health officials, by our government federal and state — and it may vary from location to location — we’re going to be ready to go.”
Rockets CEO Tad Brown, in an interview on the AT&T Sportsnet Instagram account earlier Monday, expressed a similar mix of uncertainty and hope.
“Making sure that we’re operating in as prepared a manner as we possibly can so that, hopefully, once we end up seeing the light at the end of the tunnel we’re ready to go right away,” Brown said, without offering any specifics about options under consideration. “It’s just been one of those situations you have to be very respectful, you have to be very cautious with the health professionals, the CDC, making the recommendations they need to make so that we all stay safe. But you also have to be prepared and continue to do the work … in an environment that is different than any we’ve ever engaged in.
“We’ll see what happens down the road. As soon as everybody gets the all-clear from the health professionals, which is the only thing that matters, we’ve just got to be ready.”
For Silver, there is an “additional anxiety” because his wife Maggie is due to deliver their second daughter in mid-May and could need to go to a New York hospital. That just adds to many unknowns.
“We will get through this as a country,” he said. “I don’t know what the timing will be. What will the NBA world look like post this coronavirus?”
He said the league has looked into ways “the NBA experience” could change. More pressing, however, is concern about the roughly 55,000 people the league employees, including game-night workers in arenas.
“That’s what’s keeping me up at night,” Silver said. “It has an impact on tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions, if not a billion, people around the world who follow the NBA. Immediate concern is those jobs and people’s safety when they come back to work.
“We miss it badly. I just want to assure everybody while we’re putting the health and safety of everyone first, we’re looking at every possibility to get our players back on the floor and to play NBA basketball again.”
jonathan.feigen@chron.com
twitter.com/jonathan_feigen
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