NBA commissioner Adam Silver is very pleased how the first half of the 2020-21 season unfolded and is hopeful that the league will be able to get back on its normal schedule next season.

Silver spoke Saturday during a virtual press conference ahead of Sunday’s NBA All-Star game in Atlanta. He talked about the NBA’s success after holding games in the middle of a pandemic, and how the league has been able to navigate things and do business while teams and players deal with the coronavirus, and stressed that the NBA won’t require players to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Asked is it realistic to not have any kind of widespread vaccine in place ahead of the playoffs, given the potential for teams having to be shut down as a result of that, Silver said:

“Well, I think it is realistic, even if we didn’t have required vaccinations, because of course no one, none of the players have been vaccinated now, and we’ve only had to postpone a relatively small percentage of our games. We know that for the most part a testing protocol, together with mask wearing and all of other precautions we’re taking, largely works. The NCAA Tournament is going to be played this year, again without vaccinations for their players.

“To me, we’ll make additional progress if players get vaccinated, but it certainly doesn’t require that they all get vaccinated. I also anticipate, we’re seeing this now both I think in actual numbers of people getting vaccinated in the United States, and opinion polls, that people are becoming more willing to get vaccinated. To those who have been hesitaters, I think as tens of millions of people now in the United States have gotten the vaccine, that people are seeing at least in the short term what the impact is, and they’re hearing about how incredibly effective these vaccines are. My hunch is that most players ultimately will choose to get vaccinated.”

Silver went on to conclude that in terms of players getting vaccinated: “It’s a personal decision. One thing I should note, in addition to the personal health benefits, the family health benefits, the economic benefits to getting vaccinated, because of the protocols we have in place, they’re incredibly burdensome on our players and on our teams. For example, the CDC has already announced when you get vaccinated, you don’t need to quarantine as a close contact. As you know, many of our players have had to sit out not because they tested positive but because they were required to quarantine because of a close contact.

“In addition, right now as we operate under this so-called work quarantine protocol, where players are largely only going between their homes and the arenas, once they get vaccinated they’ll be able to do more in their communities. That’s something we’ve already begun talking to the Players Association about. So there will be some real advantages and benefits to getting vaccinated for the players. Again, they have to make personal decisions at the end of the day. I take that very seriously. I take concerns very seriously. But my sense is most will ultimately decide that it’s in their interest to get vaccinated.”

The NBA postponed 31 games due health and safety protocols, with three of those games involving the Dallas Mavericks. In addition, Mavs players Dorian Finney-Smith, Maxi Kleber, Josh Richardson, Jalen Brunson and Dwight Powell combined to miss 41 games because of the league’s health and safety protocols.

Meanwhile, the first half of the NBA season ended Thursday and the second half will start Wednesday. Silver touted the season’s success thus far, saying: “First of all, in terms of the first half of the season, it went essentially as we had expected. We ended up playing 95% of our games. We knew we were going to get positive cases for players and staff members operating out of the bubble. I felt our protocols held up as well as we could have hoped. It seems that we are able, through our testing protocols, to catch infections very early.

“The goal was to catch infections before people become infectious and prevent spread. We feel we’ve done that fairly effectively. Again, I credit the schedule makers who had the foresight to divide the season in two parts. We were able to have the flexibility to push games into the second half of the season. Obviously, we won’t have that same flexibility in the second half. Something we’re watching closely.”

Silver said there are no plans to play games in Europe, Japan or China next season.

“But the plan remains to try to resume our season as close to so-called normal as possible next year,” he said. “It was one of the reasons why, in setting the schedule this year, we decided to stop in mid-July. We both wanted to allow those players who wanted to participate in the Olympics to do so, but in addition we realized if we were going to get back on cycle, and the players were going to get the appropriate downtime before the season began, we didn’t want to go deep into the summer or fall, as we did last season.

“Frankly, I’m fairly optimistic at this point that we will be able to start (the 2021-22 season) on time, and that we have roughly half of our teams have fans in their arenas right now. If vaccines continue on the pace they are, and they continue to be as effective as they have been against the virus and its variants, we’re hopeful that we’ll have relatively full arenas next season as well.”

The Mavs, who have point guard Luka Doncic starting in Sunday’s All-Star game for the second consecutive year, began selling tickets this weekend for games played in the second half of the season inside American Airlines Center. In recent games, the Mavs allowed a few thousand vaccinated health care workers and first responders to attend games at AAC.

Meanwhile, Silver said as of now the NBA is not considering going back to play in a bubble format as it did last season when both the 2019-20 season’s restart and entire playoffs where played at Walt Disney World near Orlando.

“I don’t rule anything out just because one thing we’ve all come to understand over the last year is that the virus is firmly in charge,” Silver said. “We need to adjust to circumstances as they present themselves. But I’d say maybe for the first time in the past year I’m fairly optimistic right now that as we see fans returning to our arenas, as we see public health officials across the country begin to open up sporting events, theaters, restaurants, other forms of entertainment, I feel pretty good that we’re going to continue apace.

“By the time we reach the playoffs in mid-May, things will even be considerably better than they are now. Also, obviously here in the United States, we’ve been making excellent progress in terms of vaccinations. That will be very helpful in getting people back in the arenas.”

While Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and other players voiced their displeasure on having an All-Star Game this year, Silver acknowledged that he felt no pressure from investors or his legacy as a commissioner to proceed with the midseason classic, which tips off Sunday at 7 p.m.

“There was not pressure certainly from the teams,” Silver said. “In fact, teams end up being largely on the side of players. It’s a bit lonely as the commissioner. To the extent their players are saying we’d rather not play, often the teams reflect those same sentiments.

“It’s my job to look out for the overall interest of the league. As I said earlier, I haven’t made it a secret out of the fact that economic interests are a factor. I’ll add, though, to me when I say ‘economic interests are a factor,’ it’s less to do with the economics of one Sunday night on TNT in the United States. It has more to do with the larger brand value of the NBA. The fact this is our number one fan engagement event of the year. Because we went forward with All-Star, not only did roughly 100 million people vote for the All-Stars on a global basis, but based on past ratings, well over 100 million people will watch the game and the ancillary competitions. We’ll have over a billion social media views and engagements.”

And all of that, Silver admits, is very important to the NBA.

“It’s sort of what we do,” he said. “For me, it would have been a bigger deal not to have it. I mean, especially since we know how to operate a bubble, and we have, we’ll call it, our mini bubble here in Atlanta, from the moment the players land to when they leave, they’re only going to be operating between the hotel and the arena. Once we got to the point where we felt we could do it safely, we felt we definitely should go forward. We should do it for our fans and for our business.”

Twitter: @DwainPrice

 

Share and comment

More Mavs News