Celtics’ lead governor Wyc Grousbeck talks about restarting the season

Boston Celtics lead Governor Wyc Grousbeck recently spoke at length on the pandemic and its impact on the 2019-20 season restarting.

Earlier this week, Boston Celtics lead Governor Wyc Grousbeck appeared on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Felger & Mazz ” show to talk about the potential horizon for a return to play in the NBA.

With all league activities suspended after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert’s positive coronavirus diagnosis on Mar. 11 and the league moving to allow teams to reopen training facilities in areas where shelter in place orders have been lifted, much speculation has swirled about when such a return might be feasible.

Grousbeck spoke extensively with Felger and Mazz on what a restarted season might look like, where and how it might take place, and a number of related issues.

The team owner was emphatic about the importance of safety to any plans which would be adopted in a hypothetical future.

“I’m hopeful and we’re on literally almost daily, different committee calls and league wide calls. And the tone or the substance of the meetings is always safety first, and it’s not just a buzzword or phrase,” he began.

“It’s exactly how Adam and all the owners feel if we got to make sure it’s safe, so that’s going to mean testing and everything. Else and safety precautions, but when it’s safe. We’re going to go ahead. I’m not predicting when. But the idea is to try to do something once safety is assured it’s not.”

“It’s not safe now. So there’s been no decisions,” added Grousbeck.

Boston’s lead governor remains optimistic, however. Why?

“Because I think we’ve got time. We don’t have to play according to the original schedule. We would have been in the playoffs right now,” he noted.

“We would have had home games last weekend, I think it was and we’ve got the futures in front of us … I’m just optimistic in general as a person, but I’m optimistic that eventually we’ll get to a place where it’ll be safe to reopen society.”

Where might it be? What might it look like?

“Adam has said we won’t make any decisions under any circumstances until — the next date would be May 1. But it could be, who knows — June 1 or July 1 — before a decision is made? Either to go or no go,” offered Grousbeck.

“It has not been made now. And so it’s not for me to speculate. I can imagine that we’re more likely to come back. I mean, different cities in the country are affected differently … they’re different situations.”

The franchise owner made a point of emphasizing no decisions have been made as of yet, and that it’s still premature to say. But he did relate the league has been working closely with all variety of experts to make an informed decision.

“There’s a lot of talk and … we get briefings from medical experts. We had a leading sort of Nobel quality person on the other day briefing all 30 owners and we’re trying to dig in as deep as we can. We really care,” noted Grousbeck.

“We care not only about playing the games, but about the people whose livelihoods are affected and it affects a lot of people positively if we can play these games safely,” he suggested.

The widespread availability of testing for a successful resumption of games was a particular point of emphasis for Boston’s lead governor.

“Four weeks from now, eight weeks from now, 12 weeks from now [will we have the capacity we need to restart]?

“Is antibody testing going to be good enough? Or does it turn out you need to have a quick test for if you actually have the virus in your bloodstream, and those are being developed as well, quick virus tests are being developed is my understanding. So maybe we say we have got to wait for a quick virus test.”

“A ton of people have the antibodies, they might not be immune, they still might be carriers. You know, so maybe anybodies aren’t good enough. This is science now, which I don’t know. I’m just reading in the paper,” he added, deferring to experts.

“This is not basketball, it’s science. And so if we say we’ve got to have a gene, a virus test we have be able to know if you have the virus or not. If that can be done in five minutes,” said Grousbeck.

“Then you can test everybody you want To come to a game, you can get all the fans who want to come attend the game, in theory. So it really comes down to the science being, meaning that it’s safe to play in some form or fashion, and then we’ll play in that form or fashion.”

What about the location where such a resumption of the season would be played? Would teams be able to host home games, even without audiences — or would the season need to be played in one or a handful of neutral sites, to minimize risk?

“If you’re going to go to a neutral site, which has been one thought that I’ve seen in the media, they’re going to go to a neutral site and hold up there for a period of time a month or something,” posited Grousbeck.

“Do you know do you test every day? If you’ve got enough tests for everybody, and we’re not going to be at the front of the line, we’re going to be with everybody else in the line on this testing. We’re not frontline healthcare workers and everything else. So you are the great tests available in enough bulk or whatever volume that we can actually get this done.”

“But there’s really, really smart people trying to advise us on this stuff,” he added, “and we’re trying to get get there not at the expense of anybody’s health and safety.”

Does Grousbeck think the league will consider changing the start of next season to try to minimize the impact of the pandemic to the future?

“We have not talked about that,” he began.

“That’s the kind of thing we’ll talk about in May, June, July and extending this season further, but finishing it would mean maybe we shorten next season or maybe we move it, shorten it a little bit … I think it’s all on the table over the next two years.”

“First of all, we got to get we got to get out of this virus situation globally,” emphasized Grousbeck.

“[Playing] basketball if we can [is] way down the list, but we’d like to play basketball if we can over the next two years, as many games as we can, that are entertaining to people and safe.”

“So it’s all in the mix, ” he finished.

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