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#Adam Silver: NBA’s bubble plan ‘should work’ but is still a risk

#Adam Silver: NBA’s bubble plan ‘should work’ but is still a risk

July 8, 2020 | 2:10am

Adam Silver is confident in the plan — that the NBA’s 22-team restart in Orlando, Fla., will be able to crown a champion without a spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic forcing a cancellation.

“On paper and dealing with our experts, this should work,” the NBA commissioner said at a Fortune Brainstorm Health virtual conference Tuesday afternoon.

That, of course, doesn’t mean it will. Silver admitted as much, declining to offer his level of confidence that the league won’t have to cancel play at any point after restarting on July 30 with an eight-game finish to the regular season followed by the playoffs. He expects there to be more positive tests, especially as players and team personnel arrive this week for training camp in Florida, which has become a hot spot for this virus. But Silver believes the NBA will do everything possible to create a safe environment. He said he thinks players will be safer inside the bubble than outside it because of the precautions and guidelines — daily testing, contact tracing, social distancing and wearing masks — in place.

“It’s a very protected environment, but again this virus has humbled many and so I’m not going to express any higher level of confidence than we’re following the protocols and we hope it works as we designed it,” he said.

Adam Silver
Adam SilverEPA

Not everyone is on board. A number of players, including Trevor Ariza, Avery Bradley, Wilson Chandler, DeAndre Jordan and Spencer Dinwiddie, won’t be competing due to health concerns or because they have tested positive for the virus. Silver said his biggest worry is that after initial testing and the quarantine period that follows, more positive tests pop up. At that point, the league will have to decide a course of action. If it’s just a positive case here or there, the NBA would likely play on.

“Certainly, if we had any sort of significant spread at all within our campus, we would be shut down again,” he said.

What “significant” exactly entails, Silver said he wasn’t ready to define. The NBA is in the process of doing that. The league also would want to understand where the positive cases are coming from, and if it meant there was a hole in the bubble. This is obviously different compared to when the NBA postponed the season on March 11 after Rudy Gobert tested positive. The NBA has reported a total of 25 players — out of 351 — have tested positive since last week.

In March, fans were still attending games, teams were traveling, testing was far more limited and the virus was new to everyone.

“So this is a very different model and now a very different protocol,” Silver said.

Source

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