In wake of recent COVID-19 surges across the country, specifically in Florida where the NBA restart is scheduled to occur, Adam Silver held a conference call to discuss the leagues return to play policy and if there were any growing concerns regarding the restart. Unfortunately, I was not able to get on the call, as I am not credentialed and this blog is not big enough for the NBA (or anyone) to recognize it's existence. Fortunately, for someone like myself, I am very well connected in the media and have lots of friends that were able to get me looped into the call through some back channeling and secret deals. Once the call was concluded I was able to use my boyish charm and sweet good looks to get Mr. Silver to stay on the line for a 1 on 1 interview with me. I said it was off the record but here I am recording it; good thing I didn't have credentials anyways.
"Mr. Silver thanks for joining me today, I just wanted to start off by asking straight up, is there a real risk that the season may have to be canceled?" - Jake
"Please Heywood (I was going by my alias, Heywood Jablome) call me Adam. While we have seen a large uptick in cases of COVID-19 in Florida, we are still planning to move forward with our July 30th start date. We feel we have strong safety measures to make the restart as safe as possible for the players and personnel involved." - AS
I then went on to ask what exact measures the league was going to take, just outside of the players being locked in a bubble away from human civilizations for potentially up to 3 months.
"Thanks Heywood, what a great and well thought out question. To start we will be testing every other day and conducting anti-body tests every 2 weeks. In addition to this, if a player was to test positive they will need to quarantine for 14 days and will not be cleared to play again until they test negative twice. This will work out great because these guys definitely ARE NOT confined to a bubble and showering together daily. Finally, we will mandating that each player and member of team personnel wear a "smart ring". This ring will be able to detect temperature, sleeping pattern, breathing rate, etc. We hope that these will help up recognize players that may be at risk to testing positive up to three days in advance. They were definitely not recommended by Daryl Morey to track if James Harden is going to the strip club. The last thing we want to do is track and control our players whereabouts and behavior. *wink*" - AS
Trevor Ariza, Avery Bradley, and Davis Bertans have come out and said recently that they will not be joining their teams in the bubble; and we assume more players will be following their lead soon. I asked Adam if there is a concern about more players deciding not to play.
"No there really isn't. I truly feel that players will be deterred from not playing due to fear of getting chastised by Kendrick Perkins on 'Get Up'. Silver would go on to say, "Look, I understand players not wanting to play but if they don't LeBron told me that they 100% would not be invited on the banana boat ever in their lives. That is a valid enough threat to bring the good players back to the floor in my opinion."
It was at this point Adam told me he soon would have to hop off to wax his head for an appearance on ESPN, but he had time for one more question. I asked what he would tell the critics that felt that the season was being rushed or forced in a time where the current pandemic does not seem to be under control.
"I would tell them that obviously the players health matters, but so do the dollars in everyones pockets. I don't mean the millions it would make the owners and the league and our TV networks; but also the players. So while it may seem forced to get the league back on the floor, at the end of the day we are just trying to get as much out of this season, not only in terms of finances, but also to crown a champion and complete the season as legitimately as possible ... but also make more money."
It will be interesting to see how the league responds to the uptick in cases, there is still a month to tell but I know Adam Silver (and the bank accounts) seem excited to get the ball rolling.
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