Despite league Commissioner Adam Silver’s optimistic outlook on the 2020-21 NBA season, it’s not looking good for fans in arenas next season.
While the NBA’s Disney restart being such an unequivocal success ought to earn the league a lot of credit in managing a sports league safely in a pandemic, a number of experts doubt whether it will actually be safe to have fans in arenas by January of 2021.
Ahead of the 2020 NBA Finals, Silver addressed fans and the media regarding the looming offseason and start of the next regular season, which he projected to begin after Christmas.
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Optimistically, he also related he hoped advances in technology might also make it possible for fans to be in attendance in teams’ own arenas.
“I know that Adam [Silver] is hoping we’re going to have fans,” opined Tarek O. Souryal, medical director of Texas Sports Medicine and former NBA doctor (via USA TODAY Sports’ Mark Medina). “But right now, I think it’s too early to tell.”
Dr. Armand Dorian, chief medical officer of University of Southern California Verdugo Hills Hospital agrees it’s probably “a little premature for having fans in the stands” by January.
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Some experts felt home arenas might indeed be a possibility.
But even they agreed fans were likely a bridge too far, at least at that early month of next year.
“It is possible to execute in-arena home games,” shared David Swedler, an epidemiologist and statistician working for the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation who believes that, despite home-arena games being on the table, it would be. “ludicrous to allow fans to attend those in-arena home games.”
For now, the NBA plans to monitor developments in rapid testing and how other leagues conduct themselves.
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The hope is that a combination of positive movement in containing the virus in conjunction with the evolution of detecting and preventing its spread create a scenario where fans in arenas is possible.
At least for the present, experts are cautioning us not to get our hopes upon attending games in-person to start the 2020-21 NBA season.
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