By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Adam Silver talked with media representatives through a conference call on Friday and was clear that the NBA remains committed to resuming the season but that there is still no timetable for a possible return or even a deadline for canceling the 2019-20 suspended season.
“Everything is on the table”, Silver told reporters. “The direction that the league office has received from our teams is that all rules are off at this point. If there is an opportunity to resume play, even if it looks different from what we’ve done historically, we should be modeling it.”
“It’s about the data and not the date. We are not in a position to make any decisions and it’s unclear when we will be.”
The options to resume the season remain on the table, including potentially delaying the start of next season.
“We are looking at all those things right now,” Silver mentioned. “I’d say that in terms of bubble-like concepts, many of them have been proposed to us and we’ve only listened. We are not seriously engaged yet in that type of environment because I can’t answer what precisely would we need to see in order to feel that that environment provided the needed health and safety for our players and everyone involved”.
“I know it’s frustrating — it is for me and everyone involved that I am not in a position to be able to answer the question. […] There is still enormous uncertainty around the virus as well. Now there is a lot that is changing quickly and we may be in a very different position some number of weeks from now. But it is why I initially announced at the beginning of April that I felt with confidence we would not be able to make any decisions in the month of April. I should clarify that I didn’t mean to suggest that on May 1 I would be in a position”, he added.