NBA players have come to an agreement with the league to take a 25 per cent pay cut and they'll begin deferring part of their wages from May 15th.

The money they forego would be returned if all games are completed this season - though league officials are unsure on a timeline for the campaign resuming.

“We are not in a position to make any decisions and it’s unclear when we will be,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver admitted in a media conference call when asked about when matches could return.

“The direction that the league office has received from our teams is that all rules are off at this point, if there is an opportunity to resume play, even if it looks different from what we’ve done historically, we should be modeling it.

“We don’t have a good enough understanding of exactly what those standards are that we need to meet in order to move forward. The experts don’t necessarily either.

“Our revenue in essence has dropped to zero, that's having a huge financial impact on the team business and the arena business.

“While this virus is of course a dire public health issue, so of course is shutting down the economy. I think it's why the league sees it as our obligation, to the extent we can resume play in a safe way, to look at every potential way of doing so. That’s what we’re doing now.”