Tag: marty walsh

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh doesn’t think city ready for sports yet

Marty Walsh, the mayor of the city of Boston, doesn’t think it’s safe to have professional sports play games in the city just yet.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh doesn’t think it is safe for the Boston Celtics or other area pro sports teams are ready to play local games just yet as the state slowly works towards reopening the economy.

Mercifully for the Celtics, they have no plans whatever to have any games locally, with the resumption of the 2019-20 NBA season planned to take place in Orlando, Florida at Walt Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Worlds Complex.

But for at least the short term, teams hoping to play in the state’s biggest city will have to wait, according to Walsh despite earlier statements that he would be open to local games without fans.

“As much as I would love to watch our pro teams play right now, we really have to put the health and safety of Boston residents first,” Walsh said at his daily press briefing Tuesday. “As I have said before, if pro teams [and] sports come back, it will be very different than what we’re used to.”

“I don’t think right now we’re where in a place where we’ll have fans watching and cheering from the stands,” he added.

“We also have to think about the health of the players and the players traveling from other places,” Walsh stated.

“Teams could look into things like temperature checks and testing to limit the spread amongst players and staff. Any proposals of teams will have to be matched with the proper health and safety protocol to make both staff and players feel comfortable with their plans.”

Whatever the eventual return of Celtics basketball to Boston looks like when it can be safely played, it will likely be considerably different in the manner games are conducted.

Fans are likely going to have to wait to attend games until vaccines or effective treatments for the virus behind the pandemic both exist and are widely available.

But, with so many great minds working together to tackle the global scourge interrupting so much of our quotidian lives, hopefully the return of professional sports in Boston is at most a matter of months.

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Boston Mayor Marty Walsh open to games at TD Garden without fans

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is open to allowing Boston Celtics games at TD Garden without fans.

Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, is reportedly open to allowing games at TD Garden and Fenway Park this summer with one big, fat asterisk involved:

No fans will be allowed to attend.

This is likely a moot point for the Boston Celtics as the NBA is leaning heavily towards a single-site location for all 30 teams to convene and finish the season, or possibly two sites along a similar line of thinking — namely reducing risk by eliminating travel.

But the possibility for home games is at least on the table for Boston even if it doesn’t elect to take advantage of the possibility, reports the Boston Globe’s Michael Silverman.

Local venues could be used by teams without audiences “as long as the players and the teams and the support staff and all the people that are associated with it are safe and feel comfortable,” related Walsh via Silverman.

“Obviously, their health is important to me as well. Many of them are constituents of mine, and even if they’re not constituents of mine, I obviously want people to be healthy and safe. That’s going to be the biggest challenge that they’re going to have to figure out and meet if they’re going to move forward here.”

It sounds like the city government is taking a cautious approach prioritizing public safety as a critical element of any such move to restart sports locally.

As leagues in various sports begin to experiment with audience-less games around the world, a greater body of evidence on what to do (and what not to do) will grow.

But until we have a flagship model to draw on for team sports in a pandemic, we’ll be learning as we go, and caution under such a context is undoubtedly wise.

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