Adam Silver, NBPA reps speak to players on NBA’s short-term plans

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and representatives of the NBPA spoke with players about the short-term future of the league Friday.

Speaking with the league’s players Friday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver painted a harsh picture of the near-future of the NBA, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and The Athetic’s Shams Charania in separate reports.

Silver cautiously primed the league’s players that the coming months and years will be both lean and difficult, emphasizing that it may be until after a vaccine is available for fans to be allowed back in arenas.

He also noted as much as 40% of the NBA’s revenue stream is generated by game-night spending.

How to balance fan, staff and player safety with league revenue needs dominated what Wojnarowski described as a “respectful” exchange between Silver, National Basketball Players’ Association (NBPA) executive director Michele Roberts and NBPA president Chris Paul and players.

Other issues discussed include how future seasons might be affected, particularly regarding basketball-related income (BRI) and the salary cap based off of it, as well how a return to play might take shape.

On the latter issue, it seems one or two “bubble” locations stand the greatest chance of being adopted if the league goes forward with a resumption of the 2019-20 NBA season or at least the 2020 NBA Playoffs.

Orlando, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada were among the leading options.

“There’s no point in adding risk for flying all of you city to city if there’s not going to be fans,” said Silver via Wojnarowski. “We think it would be safer to be in a single location, or two locations, to start.”

Concern any “bubble” city plan might be more like prison than entertainment — the NBPA’s Roberts was quoted by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne as saying “Are we going to arm guards around the hotel? That sounds like incarceration to me” — Silver acknowledged concessions would need to be made to make such a plan feasible.

But with those as-of-yet unnamed concessions come, quite likely, risk.

How will movement in and out of the bubble be managed, if at all? Family is to be included, but who counts as such — and will there be limits on the number of people allowed in?

At an even more basic level, what number — if any – of regular season games might be resumed? Does this situation require truncating some or all rounds of the playoffs, and if so, how?

Will teams with no chance of making the postseason be included?

Silver admitted some or all of these changes may be on the table even if his preference is to move forward with a plan as close to normal operating procedure as possible.

Collective bargaining will be critical to the process of resuming the season, which Silver was careful to note.

How salaries and salary caps, for example, will be dealt with loom as major obstacles for future seasons; “the CBA was not built for extended pandemics,” related the commissioner.

Silver believes testing will be widely available for the general population — critical to move forward — by the time it is feasible to restart, and expects only to need to remove players who might test positive for COVID-19 without canceling games, with aggressive testing of those they’d come into contact sufficient prophylaxis.

“Until there’s a vaccine, or some cocktail preventing people from dying from the virus, we are going to be dealing with this collectively,” Silver said. “The ultimate issue is how much risk we’re all comfortable taking.”

Other important takeaways highlighted by Charania:

  • A decision on whether and how to resume play could go into June.
  • The league projects a vaccine to become available in about a year.
  • Teams will be reminded not to pressure players to participate in voluntary workouts in team facilities.
  • There will be a significant impact on the NBA’s finances, especially if the rest of the season is canceled and there are no fans at games next season.
  • The NBA is looking at options to spark fan engagement in the meantime.
  • A Christmas Day start to next season is a possibility, especially if there is another wave in the pandemic.
  • There will be three to six weeks of training before the season is resumed.

The Boston Celtics are unlikely to be able to access their own facilities until at least May 18 with the state extending stay-at-home orders to that date, and — as several other teams have already decided — even if local conditions do not forbid using the facilities.

It remains to be addressed how teams like the Celtics will be addressed among teams unable to use their own facilities during the lead-up to a resumption of league activities.

But, as of now there are far more questions than answers for the NBA to sort out, and it may be some weeks before that issue is resolved.

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