NBA: Warriors are done, but league plan is to resume season July 31 in Florida
As the NBA moves to resume its season in Florida, the Warriors will not be involved in a revised regular season and playoff format, according to reports.
Today, the NBA’s board of governors is expected to approve the league’s plan to resume the season with 22 teams at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, according to several published reports.
“There is an expectation among owners that they will fall into line and overwhelmingly approve the commissioner’s recommendation,” ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowksi reported.
Joining the 16 current playoff teams will be the New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings and San Antonio Spurs in the West, and the Washington Wizards in the East, per the report.
There would be 88 regular-season games at Disney World under this plan — eight for each of the 22 teams — all played with no fans in attendance. ESPN reported that the NBA will add a brief play-in round for the East and West if the No. 9 seed in each conference finishes four or fewer games behind the No. 8 seed after the 88 games are completed. Such a playin round would require the ninth seed in each conference to beat the eighth seed twice to wrest the final
playoff spot away.
ESPN also reported that the tentative dates for the rest of the season, through the last likely date for a Game 7 in the NBA Finals, would be July 31 through Oct. 12.
With a league-worst 1550 record, the Warriors were already mathematically eliminated from the postseason when the season was postponed on March 11 after a player tested positive for the coronavirus. Golden State’s season, as expected, is over.
The Warriors front office and coaches have spent the last several weeks in “offseason mode” as they prepared for the draft and the 2020-21 season. However, the organization opened up its San Francisco facility this week, where half-a-dozen players participated in individual workouts under social-distancing guidelines.
From the Western Conference, only the Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves will not be invited to Orlando. Golden State, Minnesota and the Cleveland Cavaliers each have a 14% chance of landing the No. 1 pick during the NBA’s draft lottery — which is yet to be rescheduled.
It’s also unclear what will happen to the eight teams that would not be vying for a postseason berth under the proposed format — Charlotte, Chicago, Atlanta, Detroit, New York, Cleveland, Minnesota and the Warriors. If the 2020-21 NBA season doesn’t start until December at the earliest, which would seem to be a very real possibility, those teams could go about nine months without playing games and some have expressed concerns over what that will mean for player development.
Many questions remain, however, about the safety protocols that the NBA would use in what it has labeled a “campus” environment. Specifics about the league’s testing program, how it plans to handle players or team staff members who test positive for COVID-19 and how strictly movement will be monitored into and out of the two Disney World hotels expected to house the 22 teams are among the many details that are being negotiated between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association but have not yet been revealed.
The NBA gradually moved away from the idea of bringing all 30 teams to Disney World because of safety concerns. It settled on 22 teams — rather than just the 16 teams in playoff positions as of March 11 — in part to play enough regular-season games to help some teams meet their contractual obligations with regional television networks, which would help mitigate significant losses of revenue.
The ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is a 255-acre campus with multiple arenas that could host games simultaneously and has been home to, among other things, the Jr. NBA World Championship in recent years. ESPN is primarily owned by Disney, one of the NBA’s broadcast partners.