Amid the rising COVID-19 cases in the NBA, Commissioner Adam Silver says the league has no plans to pause the season.
"No plans right now to pause the season," he said in an interview with ESPN's Malika Andrews. "We've of course looked at all the options, but frankly we're having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now.
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"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."
Commissioner Adam Silver joined NBA Today to talk about COVID in the league as Christmas Day approaches.
— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) December 21, 2021
Silver said there are currently no plans to pause the season. pic.twitter.com/LFIPCCejnQ
Silver said that the Omicron variant is "beyond dominant" in the league at the moment, with 103 players entering COVID-19 health and safety protocols this month, with over 65 coming in the last week.
MORE: Team-by-team breakdown of players in COVID-19 protocols
As of Tuesday, the league has had to postpone seven games in the last week, with the league's marquee Christmas Day games still set to go ahead as planned on Sunday, despite several players from the 10 teams slated on Christmas currently in health and safety protocols. The Boston Celtics and New York Knicks each have six, while the Brooklyn Nets have 10, however, Silver says the league does have contingency plans in place.
"It seems for us that the right and responsible thing to do, taking all the factors into consideration, is to continue to play," Silver said.
Silver added that 65 percent of NBA players have received a COVID-19 booster shot and that 97 percent of players are vaccinated and while there currently aren't plans to reduce fan capacity at arenas, Silver said the league will continue to follow local mandates. This week the Toronto Raptors reduced their capacity by 50 percent, in accordance with new mandates from the province of Ontario.
Part 2: Commissioner Adam Silver addresses testing, asymptomatic players and potential competitive imbalance with signing short-term players. pic.twitter.com/3pJS5KJG1Z
— Malika Andrews (@malika_andrews) December 21, 2021
He also said the league will continue to review its and safety protocols.
"We are actively looking at shortening the number of days that a vaccinated, but asymptomatic player, has to be out," Silver added. "... Everything we are doing is in coordination with the players association."
The NBA and NBPA recently revised the rules around signing replacement players, allowing teams to sign one replacement player for every rostered player who tests positive for COVID-19.
Further to that, two-way players will no longer have a cap on the total amount of games they can play in the NBA during the regular season, previously capped at 50 games.
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