THE Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) announced on Thursday night that it will resume the 45th Season in a bubble environment in Clark in Pampanga on October 9 with a double header game.
In a statement, PBA Commissioner Willie Marcial said the games will be held at the Angeles University Foundation Gym, which was spruced up to host arnis, sambo and wrestling during the 30th Southeast Asian Games last December.
Marcial said that the 12-member teams will start holding scrimmages on September 27 even though the league awaits the approval of the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases for collective training. PBA players have since trained individually or in small groups.
Marcia said that under the bubble—patterned after the National Basketball Association model at Disney World in Florida—players and officials will be billeted at the Quest Hotel in Clark.
The teams’ itinerary would strictly be hotel-AUF Gym-hotel.
The bubble will last for two months to complete the Philippine Cup which kicked off with only one game—San Miguel Beer beat Magnolia, 94-78 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum—but was shuttered by the enhanced community quarantine because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Marcial said violators of the protocol will be fined P100,000 on top of a month’s suspension without pay or a five-game suspension.