NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said fans should view the upcoming All-Star Weekend in Atlanta as an “ televised only event, ” and he again discouraged fans from traveling to the game, which will be played without fans due to the COVID-19 pandemic. .
“The message within the NBA community is that we are going to be operating in a mini bubble,” Silver said in an interview with ESPN on Wednesday. “There will be no NBA functions [for fans] to participate in. We appreciate their support and hope they will see our All-Star Game on television … this is a televised only event in Atlanta. “
Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has repeatedly discouraged fans from traveling to her city for the game and has asked bars and nightclubs not to host parties.
Still, a number of events supposedly related to the game have been planned. The city of Brookhaven, a suburb of Atlanta, recently made national headlines when city council approved a measure to extend serving hours in bars and restaurants until 4 a.m. this weekend.
“I think in terms of Atlanta nightlife, the state of Georgia has made a decision to keep its restaurants and clubs open,” said Silver. “That’s their right to make that decision. All we can do on behalf of the NBA is promise them that we will not participate in that nightlife in any way.
“Our players will be included in a work quarantine protocol while in Atlanta.”
Players participating in the game and other All-Star-related competitions will fly in private planes and will be subject to the same enhanced health and safety protocols that the league has implemented this season. While several star players have publicly complained about having an All-Star Weekend amid the ongoing pandemic, each of these terms was negotiated jointly with the National Basketball Players Association.
Silver said he appreciated the personal sacrifice brought in by everyone in the NBA since March 11 last year, when the league ended indefinitely after a positive test by Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert. From the players, coaches and staff who were away from their families for months to finish last season in the bubble in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and the strict health and safety protocols they had to follow this season, to the fans of the NBA , they have continued to support the league and owners who have lost billions in revenue.
“The ability to operate in a pandemic has required a tremendous amount of shared sacrifice,” said Silver.
“The players and the coaches are front and center, but there are thousands of people behind the scenes who make it, which will allow the NBA to continue to operate. And many of them make huge sacrifices in their lives. , work in 24-hour shifts because of the nature of the PCR tests we do … and itineraries and quick decisions to be made in terms of contact tracking and quarantine, it’s never-ending.
“It really took all of our joint will.”
Silver said the same collective will will be needed to address the myriad challenges still facing the competition at this stage of the pandemic.
This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state would fully reopen businesses and revoke his mask mandate starting March 10. However, individual companies can still choose to require masks.
The three NBA teams, the Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets, playing in Texas will still be subject to NBA fan health and safety protocols, as in other states with NBA markets – Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma – but don’t have mask mandates.
“We’ve set our own standards,” said Silver. “In some cases we have deferred to public health officials. And in others we feel we should follow a national standard.
“I also recognize, and this may be even more true as we move into the future, that the United States is a large country and that it may be appropriate to have different rules in different jurisdictions. If so, we hope that those decisions are based on what is the best health and safety information in those communities.
“We will continue to work with national public health officials and local health officials to determine what those are. But so far we think we’ve found the right balance. About half of our teams currently have fans in their arenas. We have had no problem, as far as we know, in terms of dissemination to fans in our arenas. “
In addition to rapidly changing reopening plans across the country, the NBA will soon have to look at how the ability to vaccinate players, coaches and staffers will impact its protocols.
That too will be negotiated collectively with the players association, Silver said.
“We and the players’ association agree that no one should be mandated to take the vaccine,” said Silver. “My recommendation, my strong recommendation, not only to our players, but based on all the information I have, is that people should get vaccinated.
But I recognize that these are individual decisions. I haven’t been vaccinated yet, but I’ll do that as soon as it’s my turn. ‘
Silver pointed to a recent CDC announcement that vaccinated people should not be quarantined if exposed to someone with COVID-19.
“That will make a big difference in this competition,” said Silver. “We’ve been transparent about the positive things we’ve had since the season started. But there is also another category of players who had to be quarantined based on contact they’ve had with positive players.
“For example, I think it will be very liberating to accept that a vaccinated player does not have to go into quarantine. Moreover, we now have a fairly complex set of rules that in many cases require laboratory tests twice a day from our players to make sure that we do so. Preventing Spread We may find that when players are vaccinated, we can relax testing schedules and thus give players more freedom.
“But I also respect that not everyone will see it as we see it. And ultimately this is an individual decision that players have to make.”