NBA VOTE A SLAM DUNK
Board of Governors approves 22-team restart in Orlando in 29-1 landslide
The NBA is going to Disney World. Well, most of the NBA. The NBA's proposal to resume the 2019-20 season in Orlando has been approved by its Board of Governors, the league announced in a statement.
The season is tentatively scheduled to begin again on July 31.
The NBA needed just three-quarters of its teams to approve the proposal. The Board approved the NBA's proposal, 29-1, with the Portland Trail Blazers as the only team to vote against, according to The Athletic.
“The Board's approval of the restart format is a necessary step toward resuming the
NBA season,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “While the COVID-19 pandemic presents formidable challenges, we are hopeful of finishing the season in a safe and responsible manner based on strict protocols now being finalized with public health officials and medical experts.
“We also recognize that as we prepare to resume play, our society is reeling from recent tragedies of racial violence and injustice, and we will continue to work closely with our teams and players to use our collective resources and influence to address these issues in very real and concrete ways.”
Here is how the NBA calendar is shaping up: By June 15,
all players located internationally must return to their home markets. By June 21, all players who have left their markets for other states must return. By June 22, coronavirus testing will begin.
Teams will open training camps in their home markets on June 30. They will train for a week before reporting to Orlando on June 7, where the NBA will rent the Walt Disney World Resorts and use ESPN's Wide World of Sports complex as its stomping ground.
Teams will continue practice and training in Orlando for three weeks. On July 31, the games will begin.
Twenty-two of the NBA's 30 teams will travel to Orlando for the resumed NBA season. That group includes each of the eight current playoff teams in both the Eastern and
Western Conferences, as well as the teams that are six or fewer games behind the eighth seed in their respective conferences, or the: Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns in the West; and only the Washington Wizards, who are 5.5 games behind the Orlando Magic for the eighth seed out East.
Each team will play eight regular season games for the purpose of determining playoff seeding. If a team in ninth place is four or fewer games behind the eighth seed in their respective conference, the two teams will have a play-in tournament that requires just one win for the eighth seed to advance and two consecutive wins for the ninth seed to pull the upset.
As it stands in New York, the Brooklyn Nets are only a half-game above the Magic for the seventh seed: They are fighting for their playoff life, once again, as they've done all season long. The Knicks season is over.
The NBA has also scheduled an Oct. 18 date for the start of free agency. They have a target date of Nov. 10 for the start of training camp for the 2020-21 season and a tentative start date of Dec. 1 to begin next year's regular season.
There is a slight issue with the NBA's scheduling, one they cannot overlook: The league set the latest possible date for an NBA Finals Game 7 as Oct. 12. That would give both the champions and the contenders just 28 days of rest before reporting to training camp for the following season.