NBA news: Adam Silver preparing players for no fans in arena next season

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver held a league-wide conference call on Friday, discussing such details as the possibility of no fans being allowed in arenas.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver held a league-wide conference call with NBA players on Friday, with attention-grabbing information coming out this evening like the potential for no fans allowed in arenas even next season. With the 2019-20 season on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA is stricken with a question of navigating around a massive revenue drop due to no attendance as games were called off.

According to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, on the call today Silver expressed the threat of preventing fans from attending games during the 2020-21 season as a vaccine for the coronavirus, responsible for the death of tens of thousands of U.S. residents and infecting millions more, some unknowingly, has yet to be developed and may take another 12 months or more.

With fans in buildings constituting 40 percent of league revenue, the NBA is working on creative ways on TV to deliver the games to audiences, Silver told players. Silver started to prepare players for possibility of no fans in arenas next year without a vaccine, sources said.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) May 8, 2020

“40 percent” of the NBA's revenue derives from fans in attendance, per Silver, via Wojnarowski, and salaries could be slashed across the league due to revenue dropping dramatically.

The NBA has also looked into the possibility of resuming the hiatus-paused season, sans fans, by concentrating conference play by city—with Las Vegas, Nevada, and Orlando, Florida, proposed prominently. Should the league continue its suspended season, there is still roughly 30 regular-season games to be played, but it may be best to skip that and move to the postseason, undoubtedly bothering franchises on the playoff bubble.

Per Wojnarowski, all 30 owners reportedly desire the season to resume despite “suggestion made to [Silver] on the call of short-term financial advantages for some teams not to resume season.” The NBA could push a decision on whether to resume the 2019-20 season or not as far as June, and the league already postponed May's Draft Lottery and Combine.