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Tim BontempsESPN
NBA commissioner Adam Silver told ESPN’s Malika Andrews that the league has no plans to suspend its season as COVID-19 surges through the league.
“No plans right now to pause the season,” Silver said in an interview on NBA Today on Tuesday afternoon. “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 — including five over the past three days — as the omicron variant of COVID-19 has swept through the league, just as it has throughout societies around the world.
Silver said that the omicron strain is “beyond dominant” within the league at the moment, something the NBA can track as it has the ability to sequence every positive test it receives from its players, coaches and staff members around the league.
“We’re up around probably 90% of the positive cases we’re seeing right now are omicron,” Silver said.
Silver’s position on not stopping play is in keeping with the memo the league sent to teams Sunday evening announcing new rules regarding replacement players. Teams now have much more flexibility to add them immediately upon losing players to the league’s health and safety protocols — and, once they have at least two players in the protocols, are required to begin signing them.
But one thing he said the league is not yet prepared to do is to openly change its stance on how long players have to sit out in the wake of a positive test. Currently, the NBA’s health and safety protocols say that a positive test requires…
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Source : espn
