What to expect when top-tier hoops returns in late July
Saturday marked the 74th anniversary of the National Basketball Association’s foundation.
Since then, there’s been four lockouts, two of which (1998/99 and 2011) led to a shortened season.
But until 2020, nothing had seriously threatened the world’s premier professional basketball league from crowing a champion. And fortunately, it appears that streak will remain intact.
Last Thursday, nearly three months after commissioner Adam Silver was forced to hit the pause button on the 2019-2020 campaign due to the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA Board of Governors approved a plan to resume play beginning on Friday, July 31.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the plan:
• Twenty-two teams will go to Disney World in Orlando, Florida to finish the season from July 31 through October 12. That includes all 16 current playoff teams (eight from each conference) plus the next six teams with the best records across the league.
• The 22 teams invited to resume play would be the Milwaukee Bucks, Toronto Raptors,
Boston Celtics, Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn Nets, Orlando Magic and Washington Wizards from the Eastern Conference and the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, Denver Nuggets, Utah Jazz, Oklahoma City Thunder, Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trailblazers, New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs and Phoenix Suns from the Western Conference.
• Each team will play eight regular season games to figure out the final seeding before the playoffs start.
• If a No. 8 seed in either conference is up by four games or more at the end of the regular season, they earn the final playoff spot. If not, a play-in tournament would be held between the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds; the No. 8 would only need to win one tourney game, while the No. 9 would need to grab two victories to clinch a postseason spot.
• Teams will start practicing locally in July before a full training camp in Orlando begins prior to the season resumption. Players will receive daily coronavirus testing and be required to follow social distancing protocols. Team members will be allowed to play golf in the area and eat at outdoor restaurants.
All seems great, right? Well, at least for fans of the game and the 22 teams that made the cut. The other eight bottom feeders will have to wait until next season to make their mark.
Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, teams had completed anywhere between 63 and 67 games out of the 82-game regular season slate. If all things go according to plan, things will look quite a bit different when they resume.
In addition to the aforementioned regulations, there will almost certainly be no fans in attendance at scheduled games. That means eerily quiet arenas, perhaps taking the players back to their elementary days on the blacktop. According to NBA reporter Shams Charania, the NBA and NBPA is actually considering using crowd noise from the video game NBA 2K to give it a more normal feel.
Add that to the fact that all games will be played in Disney World and all parties involved will stay there for the entirety of their championship quest, and we’ve got the makings of an unprecedented, real-life fantasy on our hands.
It only seems right that the NBA would do everything and anything in its power to finish out a season that had so much promise. And as the first of “The Big 4” (NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB) to officially announce a return date and plan, fans and players alike should be thrilled for the return to action – because truthfully, less than three months ago things looked pretty bleak.
(Gloucester Daily Times/TNS)
Shortened schedule planned for next season
Meanwhile, a shortened 2020/21 season is part of the NBA’s plan to reduce the impact of a compacted offseason.
The league’s desire to get closer to the usual calendar, including ending next season in April with the playoffs running into mid-June, is also driving decisions around the makeup of next season.
“If you’re going from the middle of October to starting the season the first of December, if you are one of the teams in the Finals, that’s quick,” Atlanta Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk said on a conference call Tuesday. “But they want to try to stay as close to the historical timing as possible. So I don’t think this is something you’ll see stick. They’ve talked to us on one of our GM calls that it might be a condensed schedule next year. More so than in the past. As you know, there’s been a big drive to avoid back-to-backs and certainly four in five nights, but we might find ourselves in a situation next year where it would be much more condensed.”
The Hawks are one of the eight teams who aren’t part of the upcoming restart with no chance to reach the playoffs. That means the Hawks, like other teams such as the Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls, would go from mid-March until November without formal workouts.
“Because of this circumstance, I think the league wants to stay as close to its original schedule as possible,” Schlenk said. “There’s a lot of different reasons for that – the college season, the draft and how all of that plays out. So that’s why they’ve laid out a timeline where it would be a very quick turnaround from the NBA Finals to the start of the season.”
The tentative key dates released last week include training camp starting November 10 and the first regular-season game being played December 1.
Key considerations facing the league next summer include the postponed Olympic Games, scheduled for July.
Ironically, Hawks CEO Steve Koonin has advocated for the NBA to start its seasons in December so it does not compete with the NFL and college football for television ratings and attendance. Koonin outlined that proposal on a panel at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in February, but Schlenk joked that Koonin “came up with that, he would tell you, 10 years ago when he was still working at Turner.” Yet Schlenk predicted, “I don’t think this is something you’ll see that will stick.
“Right now their plan is still to be at 82 games,” Schlenk said. “They did not give us any indication it would not be 82 games. But they did mention the possibility that maybe it would be more condensed.” (Reuters)