Silver: Later start to season may disrupt Olympic plans

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday that his “best guess” is that next season will not start until at least January, plus acknowledged that the laterthan-usual schedule could mean top U.S. men’s players miss next summer’s Tokyo Olympics.

Silver, a guest in a series of panel discussions on CNN, did not indicate that any decisions are finalized. The league was originally hoping for a Dec. 1 start to next season, then shifted its focus to the chance of a late December start, and now the target has apparently moved again.

“I continue to believe that we’re going to be better off getting into January,” Silver said in a discussion with Bob Costas during part of the “Citizen by CNN” event. “The goal for us next season is to play a standard season … an 82-game season and playoffs. And further, the goal would be to play games in home arenas in front of fans, but there’s still a lot that we need to learn.”

The NBA hasn’t played in arenas filled with fans since March 11, when the league suspended its season because of the coronavirus pandemic. A very small number of fans — maybe 30 or 40 per game — have been allowed to watch inside the NBA’s restart bubble at Walt Disney World in recent weeks, all of them family members or close friends of players.

A typical NBA season has a regular season that lasts for nearly six months, followed by about a two-month postseason. If next season is typical — and there’s no way of knowing that it will be, or even could be — a January start could mean a June or July regular-season finish, with playoffs concluding in August or September.

That could greatly affect Olympic plans. The rescheduled Tokyo Olympics are set to begin July 23 and run through Aug. 8.