NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said that fans should think of the upcoming All-Star Weekend in Atlanta as an “exclusive television event” and once again discouraged fans from going to the game, which is being played without fans because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The message within the NBA community is that we are going to operate in a mini bubble,” Silver said in an interview with ESPN on Wednesday. “There will be no NBA functions [for fans] to participate. We appreciate their support and hope that they watch our All-Star Game on television … this is an exclusive television 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 clubs not to host parties.
Still, a series of events that aim to have a connection to the game have been planned. The city of Brookhaven, a suburb of Atlanta, recently made national headlines when the City Council passed a measure extending office hours in its bars and restaurants at 4 am this weekend.
“I think that in terms of nightlife in Atlanta, the state of Georgia has decided to keep its restaurants and clubs open,” said Silver. “It is their right to make that decision. All we can do, on behalf of the NBA, is to commit to them that we will not participate at all in that nightlife.
“Our players will be on a working quarantine protocol while in Atlanta.”
Players participating in the game and other All-Star-related competitions are flying private planes and will be subject to the same improved health and safety protocols that the league operated this season. While several stars have publicly complained about having an All-Star weekend in the midst of the ongoing pandemic, each of these conditions has been collectively negotiated with the National Basketball Players Association.
Silver said he appreciates the personal sacrifice made by everyone in the NBA since March 11 last year, when the league ended indefinitely after a positive test from Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert. From the players, coaches and officials who spent months away from their families to complete the last season in the bubble in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, and the strict health and safety protocols they had to follow this season, to NBA fans, who continued supporting the league and the owners, who lost billions in revenue.
“The ability to operate in a pandemic required an enormous amount of shared sacrifice,” said Silver.
“The players and coaches are in the front and in the center, but there are thousands of people behind the scenes who are doing it, who are allowing the NBA to continue to operate. And many of them are making enormous sacrifices in their lives. In some cases, working on 24-hour shifts because of the nature of the PCR tests we’re doing … and travel schedules and quick decisions that need to be made in terms of contact tracking and quarantine, it’s endless.
“It really took all of our collective will.”
Silver said that the same collective will will be needed to face the countless challenges that the league still faces at this stage of the pandemic.
This week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state would fully reopen companies and withdraw its masked mandate, starting March 10. However, individual companies can still choose to require masks.
The three NBA teams, Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets, who play in Texas will still be subject to NBA health and safety protocols for fans, just as they are in other states that have NBA markets – Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma – but has no mask mandates.
“We set our own standards,” said Silver. “In certain cases, we defer to public health authorities. And in others, we believe that we need to follow a national standard.
“I also recognize, and this may be even more true as we move forward, that the United States is a large country and it may be appropriate to have different rules in different jurisdictions. If that is the case, we hope these decisions are based on the best health and safety information in these communities.
“We will continue to work with national public health authorities and local health authorities to determine what they are. But, so far, we believe we have achieved the right balance. Approximately half of our teams at this time have fans in their arenas. As far as we know, we didn’t have a single problem in terms of dissemination among fans in our arenas. “
In addition to rapidly changing plans to reopen across the country, the NBA will soon have to address how the ability to vaccinate players, coaches and staff will affect its protocols.
This will also be negotiated collectively with the players’ association, Silver said.
“We and the players’ association agree that no one should be forced to get the vaccine,” said Silver. “My recommendation, my strong recommendation, not only for our players, but based on all the information I have, is that people should be vaccinated.
“But I recognize that these are individual decisions. I haven’t been vaccinated yet, but I will, as soon as my turn comes.”
Silver pointed to a recent CDC announcement that vaccinated people do not need to be quarantined if they are exposed to someone with COVID-19.
“It will make a big difference in this league,” said Silver. “We have been transparent about the positive cases that we have had since the start of the season. But there is also another category of players that had to be quarantined based on the contact they had with positive players.
“I think, for example, accepting that a vaccinated player does not need to be quarantined will be very liberating. In addition, we have a very complex set of rules in place that, in many cases, require laboratory tests twice a day from our players to to ensure that we can prevent the spread. It could be that when players are vaccinated, we can loosen the test schedules and therefore give players more freedom.
“But I also respect the fact that not everyone will see the way we see it. And, ultimately, this is an individual decision that players need to make.”