As N.B.A. Mulled Return, Financial Needs Emerged as Central

The vibe has certainly changed since the early days of the March 11 shutdown. In Silver’s lone news conference since pressing pause on the season, conducted April 17, he identified a number of prerequisites before play could resume.

“We’re looking for the number of new infections to come down,” Silver said. “We’re looking for the availability of testing on a large scale. We’re looking at the path that we’re on for potentially a vaccine. We’re looking at antivirals. On top of that, we’re paying close attention to what the C.D.C. is telling us on a federal level and what these various state rules are that are in place.”

Quoting Iger, who had been the N.B.A.’s guest on a Board of Governors call that preceded the news conference, Silver summarized the position by saying the league’s return timetable would be dictated by “the data and not the date.”

The data did not change significantly in May. Florida’s Department of Health, furthermore, reported 1,419 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, and nearly two million recorded coronavirus cases, including more than 100,000 deaths, have been recorded in the United States. Yet Silver’s position appears to have softened.

By the time he addressed the union’s membership on May 8, Silver told players that he was confident that the league would have little issue, both practically and from a public-relations perspective, obtaining the requisite test kits needed for an N.B.A. bubble. Silver also told them that he anticipated the N.B.A. being able to adopt the strategy introduced in German soccer’s Bundesliga, and quarantine individual players who contracted Covid-19 and play on — in stark contrast to Rudy Gobert’s positive test on the day of Utah’s March 11 game at Oklahoma City that immediately shuttered the whole league and prompted numerous leagues to follow suit.

In front offices leaguewide, as well as within the player ranks, there is little mystery behind the pivot. This has been a catastrophic season for the league financially, starting with a tweet by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey in October in support of pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong that did in “the hundreds of millions of dollars” in damage to the N.B.A.’s business relationships in China, according to Silver’s estimate in February. On his conference call with players, Silver said that 40 percent of the league’s annual revenue comes from ticket purchases and other in-arena fan expenditures, which means that an even more lucrative revenue stream than the one damaged in China is unavailable indefinitely.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/sports/basketball/coronavirus-nba-orlando.html