The NCAA announced on Wednesday that attendance for the NCAA Tournament would be limited to “essential staff and limited family attendance” due to the coronavirus, and the NBA is also reportedly planning to keep fans out of arenas.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that the “NBA’s Board of Governors shared a consensus on Wednesday to continue the season playing games without fans in arenas amid the coronavirus crisis, and Commissioner Adam Silver is expected to move in that direction with a decision on Thursday.”
Initially, there were reports of the NBA putting the season on hiatus, but most organizations reportedly wanted to just “move toward eliminating fans from arenas to continue playing games,” according to Wojnarowski. One team wanted to continue to the status quo “until a governmental/public mandate dictated change,” according to Woj: the New York Knicks.
It would still seem to be very possible that an NBA season hiatus could be in the near future, with the way things are trending. But for now, the plan appears to be to play in empty arenas. The Golden State Warriors had already announced that they were playing their next game in San Francisco without fans: