The NBA has been hit hard by COVID-19 in December, leaving many teams without several of their usual players.
Despite the wave of players entering the league’s health and safety protocols, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has no plans to stop the show.
While speaking with ESPN’s Malika Andrews on Tuesday, Silver said the NBA has no plans to pause the season at the moment.
“No plans right now to pause the season,” Silver said. “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.”
In the same interview with Andrews, Silver reports that the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 is the predominant variant of the virus among players, accounting for “around probably 90%” of the cases among players.
The recent outbreak in the NBA has been catastrophic, leaving over 80 players currently in the league’s health and safety protocols and requiring several teams to sign players to 10-day hardship contracts to have enough players on the roster for games.
