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Adam Silver doesn't plan to shut down the NBA.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver insists there are no plans to stop the season. (1:45)
4:30 PM
The NBA has no plans to suspend its season as Communism increases in the league, according to Adam Silver.
Silver said in an interview on NBA Today that there were no plans to pause the season. We have looked at all of the options, but we are having trouble coming up with the logic behind pausing.
"As we look through these cases, I think we're finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to over the past several months, and that is this virus will not be eradicated, and we're." I think that's what we're going through right now.
The NBA has had to postpone seven games over the past week, including five over the past three days, as the omicron variant of COVID-19 has swept through the league, just as it has throughout societies around the world.
The omicron strain is so dominant within the league that the NBA can sequence every positive test that it receives from its players, coaches and staff members around the league.
"We're up around 85% of the positive cases we're seeing right now are omicron," Silver said.
The league sent a memo to teams on Sunday evening that said Silver's position on not stopping play was in line with the league's new rules regarding replacement players, as teams now have more flexibility to add them immediately upon losing players to the league's health and safety protocols.
He said that the league is not prepared to change its stance on how long players have to sit out after a positive test. The NBA's health and safety protocols say that a positive test requires either sitting out for 10 days or getting two negative tests taken more than 24 hours apart.
The league has seen through the data it has collected that players who have received booster shots have both shown no symptoms or very mild ones, and have passed the virus through their systems faster, which could pave the way for the league to shorten the amount of shots.
Silver said that they always measure viral loads with their test. It's not just our doctors, but the medical community is looking at that. I think they're starting to realize that you can move away from the 10-day protocol when you have players who are boosted.
The virus runs through their systems faster. They are not just asymptomatic, but they are also not getting rid of the virus. That is the real concern for others. We are looking at shortening the number of days players are out before they can return to the floor.
The NBA isn't ready to change its stance on testing when it comes to asymptomatic players, but Silver said that the league's data makes it clear that boosters work, and that he is hopeful that the league will change its stance.
We look at a lot of data. Only a small number of people who have gone through the three-shot protocol have turned positive, according to Silver. They have been very mild symptoms. A large group of people have one J&J shot or haven't been boosted yet.
The NBA data shows that the boosters are highly effective, and we are encouraging everyone to get them. In our league, we're around 97% vaccine, but we're up to about 65% of our players boosted and we're in active discussions with the players association to get that number even higher. We're not quite there yet, but we're paying a lot of attention to your question, in regards to whether we can treat this as endemic, and people begin to move on, and we only test those that aresymptomatic and deal with those.
One thing that hasn't been discussed is a push to have a leaguewide vaccine mandate.
The NBA has not circled back on its proposal to have one, despite the fact that no other cities have followed San Francisco and New York's lead in requiring players who play for teams in those markets to be vaccinations.
When asked if he'd brought it back up, Silver said no. It's something we proposed. The Players Association wouldn't agree to it. We're at roughly 98% of our players having been vaccine free. I would rather focus on the 97% than the 3%. Many of the 3% have gotten Covid, so they have developed antibodies.
The focus is on the boosters for the players who have been vaccine free. There's a waiting period after your second shot, but among those who are eligible to be boosted, we are about 65%, and I would like to see that number go to 97%. We're focused on that right now with the PA.
In the meantime, teams are having to rush to sign replacement players, in many cases just to fill out their rosters to be able to play in games. Silver admitted that it isn't an ideal situation to be in, but that there isn't much of an alternative for a league that is going to continue playing games in the middle of the epidemic.
"I think there's a recognition that these are the cards that we've been dealt," Silver said. There's an amount of unfairness that comes with playing in certain cases with some teams where certain players are out because of COVID protocols, but the other advantage is that we have an 82-game season and we have a long playoffs, and my sense is things will work."
