Teams will be able to carry two additional active players on game nights this season.

The NBA’s Board of Governeors is providing teams with an extra measure to help counter shorthanded situations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Thursday, the board approved a plan to give teams the ability to expand their active roster on game nights from 13 to 15 for the 2020-21 season — a move being made in anticipation of the likelihood that teams will be missing players from time to time.

In prior seasons, teams were permitted to carry 15 total players, but only 13 could be active for game nights. An additional pair of roster spots for players on “two-way” contracts — usually designated for prospects that spend much of the season with G League affiliate teams — remain available as well.

“There will be people that get the virus. It’s going to happen and we have to adjust,” Toronto guard Kyle Lowry said Thursday, a few hours before the board of governors convened, when asked about the health and safety protocols for the season. “And when it happens, no one’s going to know how … no one’s going to understand how it happened. But we have to be able to have an adjustment, to understand that things are going to happen. We have to adjust, to go on and figure it out.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.