THE Philippine Basketball Association’s (PBA) plan to open its 46th season on April 18 now hangs in the balance following the reimplementation of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in the Greater Manila Area (GMA) to curb the spike in Covid-19 cases that is close to breaching 10,000 infections a day in the past week.
“We still don’t know what will happen, so I cannot say anything for now,” PBA Commissioner Willie Marcial told BusinessMirror on Sunday. “We will see the [status] on April 5 first. Nobody wanted this to happen in the first place.”
Malacañang enforced ECQ starting on Monday in Metro Manila, Laguna, Bulacan and Rizal province because of the alarming daily increase in Covid-19 cases. Under ECQ, movement are more restricted and gatherings are almost totally banned.
Marcial recently announced an April 18 opening day in a semi-bubble format at the Ynares Sports Center in Antipolo City, but everything remained on hold because of the ECQ that ends on Easter Sunday on April 4.
PBA Chairman Ricky Vargas shared the same sentiment as Marcial.
“All teams have just stopped practising [non-contact practices],” said Vargas, TNT Tropang Giga’s governor. “We are eyeing a closed-circuit semi-bubble format because it’s hard to do a pure bubble again.”
By semi-bubble, everyone involved in the games will strictly follow a home-venue-home routine—unlike in the pure bubble where players, coaches, officials and staff are confined in a closed facility.