Adam Silver Discusses COVID-19 Vaccine, Possibility of NBA Expansion, More

The NBA starts a season filled with unprecedented uncertainty Tuesday, and league commissioner Adam Silver opened up about a number of topics.

As Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today noted, one thing Silver stressed is the fact that the NBA will not use its power and financial resources to skip the proverbial line when it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations.

"It goes without saying that in no form or way will we jump the line," Silver said on the conference call Monday. "We will wait our turn to get the vaccine. When you think about the logistical feat that now the federal and state governments are undertaking, where if every citizen ultimately requires two doses and with a population of over 300 million, it's beyond comprehension when you start to begin to think about the challenges of transporting and distributing this vaccine."

The NBA pulled off quite the feat of its own when it finished the 2019-20 season and its playoffs inside a bubble-like environment at Walt Disney World Resort. It had zero positive cases as the Los Angeles Lakers played their way to a title.

This season figures to be different, though, considering the league will play in home stadiums and not inside a controlled bubble.

COVID-19 has impacted every league that has attempted to play without the benefit of a bubble, and Silver acknowledged that will surely be the case for the 2020-21 campaign that will feature 72 games for each team.

"We are prepared for isolated cases," Silver said. "In fact, based on what we've seen in the preseason, based on watching other leagues operating outside the bubble, unfortunately it seems somewhat inevitable. But we're prepared for all contingencies. The only thing I can add is that I've acknowledged it was a mixed sort of health and safety and economic decision to start our season, meaning that health and safety have always been our highest priority."

He pointed to the economic importance of playing but said, "If at any point we no longer believe that it is responsible to play, we will halt the season."

In November, Tim Bontemps of ESPN noted the league provided a 134-page health and safety protocol to its teams detailing plans for dealing with COVID-19. Notably, any player who tests positive will miss at least 12 days by waiting for 10 days after testing positive and two days of working out by themselves and undergoing cardiac screening.

Silver didn't only talk about dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and also addressed the possibility of expansion.

As Bontemps shared, Silver didn't close the door on the notion, underscoring the financial issues facing the league amid the pandemic and how expanding would provide an entry fee that would go to existing teams.

"I think I've always said that it's sort of the manifest destiny of the league that you expand at some point," Silver said. "I'd say it's caused us to maybe dust off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion. We've been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic. But certainly not to the point that expansion is on the front burner."

The last time the NBA expanded was 2002 when the Charlotte Bobcats (now the Hornets) were formed.

They started play in 2004.