Report: NBA Details Mask Protocols for Players, Coaches, Refs for Restart

Referees will not be mandated to wear masks when the NBA restarts its season on July 30 at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, following a four-and-a-half month suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic, per Shams Charania of Stadium and The Athletic. 

That note lies within the NBA's 113-page health and safety protocol, which was released to teams Tuesday in advance of the planned resumption of play.

Masks will be required of inactive players and coaches sitting in the second row of seats on the sideline, per Charania. No masks are required of players and coaches in the first row, although the league recommends that coaches wear them.

All players, team staff and guests must follow all pre-arrival and campus-wide safety protocols. They must sign off on their adherence in writing, and players who do not follow protocols can receive punishment as lenient as a warning or as strict as a campus ban, effectively ending their season, per Charania.

"All players, team staff and guests will be required to certify in writing that they will adhere to all pre-arrival rules and league rules while on campus," Charania added.

The NBA's safety protocol is extremely thorough, to the point where doubles pingpong games have been banned, per ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

Players can leave campus but only for extenuating circumstances, such as medical care needed off-site, a child birth, a severe illness, a death in the family or a family wedding, per Wojnarowski.

Twenty-two teams are scheduled to head to ESPN's Wide World of Sports Complex to finish the season, which will consist of eight more regular-season matchups per team followed by a 16-team playoff.

The top eight teams currently in the Eastern and Western Conferences and the six teams within six games of the playoff picture in either the East or the West are headed to Florida.