NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said that the league has no plans to suspend its season, despite the omicron variant surging.
“No plans right now to pause the season,” Silver said in an interview on NBA Today. “We have of course looked at all the options, but frankly we are having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now.
“As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country, let alone the rest of the world, 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 going to have to learn to live with it. I think that’s what we’re experiencing in the league right now.”
The NBA has had to postpone seven games over the past week due to COVID-19, with omicron “beyond dominant,” according to Silver.
“We’re up around probably 90% of the positive cases we’re seeing right now are omicron,” he said.
The league Sunday sent a memo to teams announcing new rules regarding replacement players; clubs now have more flexibility to add players immediately after losing one to COVID-19 protocols. However, Silver said the league is not yet prepared to change its stance on how long a player must sit out in the wake of a positive test.
“We always are measuring viral loads with our PCR test,” Silver said. “So that’s something, again, that it’s not just our doctors but the medical community is looking at. I think they’re already realizing that you can move away from the 10-day protocol when you have players who are vaccinated and boosted.
“It seems the virus runs through their systems faster. They become not just asymptomatic but, more importantly, they’re not shedding the virus anymore. That’s the real concern in terms of others. And so we are actively looking at shortening the number of days players are out before they can return to the floor.”
