From behind two inches of plexiglass, a canvas mask that covered his face and NBA basketball playing in front of his eyes, Adam Silver felt a wave of emotion wash over him. It had been more than four months since the COVID-19 pandemic knocked out the league, when Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive in Oklahoma City, stopping the game a scrimmage. Everything that followed – the countless conversations with epidemiologists, the heated negotiations with the players’ union, the barrage of criticism from those who doubted the ethics of a sports league that conducted thousands of rapid reaction tests when the surrounding communities struggled to find just one get – lead to this, a socially distant seat for the revival of the NBA, Lakers-Clippers, an LA rivalry in central Florida, a marquee event playing out for 300 or so virtual fans. “It was a little overwhelming to watch,” Silver said Sports Illustrated. “To see our players basketball together, that which we have worked on for many months on paper, on our computer screens, I would say it moved to me.”
The NBA bubble is not really a bubble. It is a quarantine environment, spread over four hotels and three arenas, with 1,500 people moving in it. It’s not cheap – the total cost will be about $ 170 million – but it has worked. As baseball struggles to keep teams healthy and expel college football, the NBA is on the rise again. Players, initially learning of a lockdown, have arranged themselves into routines. “I was really worried about potentially feeling a bit like an armed camp,” says Michele Roberts, executive director of the NBPA. ‘I have found that our players are able to relax. I am very impressed with the work that everyone has done to make this thing happen. ”
A few weeks into the new resume, Silver spoke with Sports Illustrated about the most challenging season in history.
Greg Nelson / Sports Illustrated
SI: The bubble – sorry, the campus – is operational. Is it what you hope it would be?
AS: It’s better than we thought. Players took it in a more atmospheric way than we thought they would. We knew this enormous sacrifice required of everyone, but I think what’s hard to calibrate – and this may go back to my experience when I first entered the arena – is the human emotion that comes with other people are coming. And I think everyone realized that they miss it more than they even understood. There are players whose teams did not participate, who were unable to participate this summer due to injuries or other problems, who, once talking to other NBA players, have asked to participate in the experience in Orlando.
I think it’s the cohesion, the camaraderie, the brotherhood of the players. That is also the case for the coaches, the team staff and the management. To take those masks off and slam them into each other, whether it’s someone on your team or an opponent, it’s just a human desire we have for contact with other people.
SI: Looking back over the last few months, how confident were you that we would come here?
AS: It is ebbed and streamed. I mean, there were moments of great optimism, and there were moments of despair. And I would now even say, my confidence is still flourishing and flowing. I am very aware of how this virus progresses in many cases, even to the surprise of the greatest experts who have studied coronaviruses for a lifetime. I also recognize that the coronavirus is not the only one we need to address here. There is the continued health of the players. There are typical injuries that occur, and we have been very careful to see if there is an unusual rate of injuries that we have not seen so far. There is also the mental well-being of our players and the rest of the community, living on a campus. It’s been about three weeks so far, but for those teams that end up competing in the Finals for the championship, if all goes according to plan, that’s even more than, well, about two months away, so it’s a long period of relative isolation.
SI: While putting this plan together, was there one problem you kept coming back to?
AS: The test. How would these protocols work in terms of daily tests, or were we comfortable that enough tests were available, that we did not take these tests from the surrounding community, that we were able to perform these tests on a fast enough basis to make it workable in the community. Something we still have to do is how we would handle false positions, as well as the recognition that you will statistically also get false negatives along the way.
SI: Anything you wish you could have done?
AS: I would say that my biggest disappointment is that we could not find a sensible way to bring 30 teams there. We know that everything here is about compromises, but I feel bad that there are eight teams that are not part of the experience.
SI: You said you wanted to bring the sport back to the fans. But there were enormous financial consequences if the NBA did not return. What would the fallout have been if the league could not return?
AS: [Pauses.] I doubt it only because it’s better to play than not to play, but in terms of a net base it’s not as dramatically different as people think, because it’s so expensive to do what we do in Orlando. It’s not a sustainable model, but we also recognize that this virus will end and that at some point we will return to more of a normal business operation with fans in it. But I recognize that there is a chance that this season could have stopped for a while. The league would certainly have survived if we were forced to quit, and it will survive if we were forced to finish before October.
David E. Klutho / Sports Illustrated
SI: The NBA has supported advocacy for players, from messaging on the backs of uniforms to relaxing rules about kneeling during the national anthem. It’s, honestly, not a position I think the league would have taken a few years ago. When the issue of knee injury arose during the national anthem in 2017, you were pretty clear that you expected players to stand up. What made this different?
AS: The assassination of George Floyd has been a turning point in the movement for social justice in the United States. The league, our team owners and the players had a lot of conversations about what was happening in our country, the fact that an estimated 25 million Americans have protested over issues related to racial injustice. And there is, of course, the recognition that about 80% of our players are Black. The assassination of George Floyd and the protests happened right at the moment we were negotiating the return protocols with the players, and they also felt that it was part and parcel of going back to basketball that we collectively focus on these issues.
[We’ve attempted] to involve people, regardless of race, in conversations about why there are such large in-shares in this country, even around this immediate health crisis. Black Americans are hospitalized multiple times that are white COVID Americans; economic disparities hit black Americans at much greater rates than white Americans in this pandemic. Our view as a league was part of a responsibility to respond to our players and to help use this NBA platform to get people to do what we recognize can be a very uncomfortable conversation.And honestly, from a personal point of view, I immediately share some of those awkward conversations in the league office with many of my Black colleagues, some of whom I have worked with for decades who put things to me that they may never have. felt comfortable tell me in the past. In some cases, it was about personal life experiences they had that they did not share, and in other cases, it was how they experienced the NBA as an official of the Black league. I found myself in some cases very defensive in those conversations, but I also forced myself to listen. Collectively, we thought these were conversations we should have as a country.
We were not in a position, given that we were trying to get back to playing in the middle of all the social unrest, to not be a part of the conversation. . . given that some of the most high-profile Black people in the world play in the NBA.
SI: Is the criticism coming from the NBA embracing this position, from conservative networks and politicians, just the cost of doing business?
AS: To be honest, it makes me uncomfortable. I understand critics who say they turn to sports to avoid controversy. But it is currently indestructible in our country at the moment. I wish there was an easier path for us to follow right now. Even if that were, I do not think it is necessarily the responsible thing to do.
I think our fans can be separated on the floor as messages about the players’ jerseys as on the floor. Even to the extent that they do not, I think they recognize that these are not simple times. Our players are not one-dimensional people, and they can both be deeply concerned about problems facing our country and at the same time carry out their craft at the highest level.
David E. Klutho / Sports Illustrated
SI: You mentioned the next season. How deep into the planning stages are you? Is it bubble or chest at this point if the landscape has not changed?
AS: We are deep into the planning stages, but only to the extent that we have dozens of permutations as we look into the next season. It is certainly not bubble as bust. Our first and highest priority would be to find a way to have fans in our arenas. We continue to go through all the different test methods. We are up to date on vaccine developments and antivirals and other protocols for the ability to bring people together in arenas. We study what colleges do because they look to bring thousands of students back to campus. We will try to find the right balance between waiting as long as possible so that we have the best possible information at the moment we make the decision, and recognize that at some point we need to start unlocking plans. We want to find a way to play for fans, but it’s just too early to know how realistic this is.
I must say, however, I would not bet against American ingenuity. Just because of how high profile our experience in Orlando is at the moment, we are in talks with dozens of test companies. We study all kinds of new, relatively inexpensive, rapid tests. To the extent that these tests are successful and come to market, it will also open up more opportunities for us to bring fans to arenas, even prevaccine.
SI: Has all of this together made it easier to be born than to have been harder in a lifetime in your life?
AS: [Laughs.] Somehow easier. The silver plating – no pun intended – has been that. My wife and I had a baby girl in the middle of this, mid-May, a new daughter. And that’s the time of year I should have been on the road. There’s no doubt I would have spent some time at home, but it probably wouldn’t have been more than a week into the middle of the playoffs. And so the fact that I walked not only my newborn but also my three-year-old daughter, and watched her for the last four months develop her, have the opportunity to spend time with her every day, to have her kind of sitting on my lap for many of the Zoom calls, despite all the difficulties over this period, have been a real joy in my life.
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