Adam Silver worried coronavirus could ruin Orlando return to play

The NBA is set to resume the 2019-20 season later this month at Walt Disney World, but Adam Silver is still worried about the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The NBA commissioner admitted he won't be surprised if more players or staff members test positive for the virus after traveling to Orlando, Fla., and if they test positive for it after the league's mandatory quarantine period, issues will arise.

"We won't be surprised when they first come down to Orlando if we have some additional players test positive," Silver told Fortune Brainstorm Health, according to ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk. "What would be most concerning is once players enter this campus and then go through our quarantine period, then if they were to test positive or if we were to have any positive tests, we would know we would have an issue.

"... We would know that there's in essence a hole in our bubble or that our quarantine or our campus is not working in some way," Silver added later. "So that would be very concerning."

Silver said any major amount of positive cases inside the Disney World bubble could result in a second shutdown of the season. The Brooklyn Nets, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, Miami Heat, Milwaukee Bucks and Sacramento Kings have had to shut down their facilities in the past week due to positive coronavirus cases. 

In addition, Florida reported over 7,000 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday as COVID-19 continues to surge. However, Silver believes the Disney bubble is "as protected as possible from the environment around us."

While the risk of the virus spreading is a major cause for concern, the league has put in extensive health and safety protocols to attempt to minimize the risk of infection. 

In order to reduce the risk of spreading, any player who tests positive for the coronavirus will be placed in "isolation housing" and take another test to confirm the test result, according to The Athletic's Shams Charania. A player must then test negative twice before returning to the NBA's Disney campus.

Every player will be tested nightly while on campus, and the results are expected to come in the morning. The NBA is in discussions with national coronavirus testing providers, such as BioReference Laboratories, LabCorp, Quest Diagnostics and Vault Health/RUCDR Infinite Biologics at Rutgers to finalize its testing program, Charania reports.