Transactions around the league can begin

Let the new season begin. The NBA provides teams with more details on how offseason personnel moves can work, including setting a Nov. 16 start date for trades.

The NBA offseason, such as it was, is over. A wild few days of decisions and player movement await.

Teams may begin making trades Nov. 16, according to a memo sent to teams and obtained early Nov. 16 by The Associated Press. And the first deal known to be tentatively agreed upon would send guard Dennis Schröder from Oklahoma City to the champion Los Angeles Lakers for Danny Green and the No. 28 pick in Wednesday’s draft, a person with knowledge of that agreement told the AP.

ESPN first reported the details of the trade.

The “temporary transaction moratorium” across the league ends Monday at noon, the league told teams. Also officially due Monday: All-NBA forward Anthony Davis’ decision on his $28.7 million option year with the Lakers, one that he will formally decline in favor of signing a long-term and huge money contract with that club.

Nicolas Batum’s $27.1 million option decision with Charlotte is also due Monday. Most other player and team options are due Thursday.

Free-agent talks can formally begin Friday at 6 p.m. Eastern, and signings may begin Sunday, Nov. 22.

It’s all part of what will become a whirlwind of player movement and other decisions in the coming days and weeks — barely a month from the end of this past season’s NBA Finals.

Teams are still waiting on their schedules for the coming season, and the Toronto Raptors aren’t sure if they will be able to play in their home city to start the season because of the challenge of getting teams from the U.S. across the Canadian border during a pandemic.

Plenty of matters regarding coronavirus testing still have to be worked out before training camps open next month.

The Raptors want to play in Toronto. They aren’t sure if that will be possible, and Raptors President Masai Ujiri said in an open letter published Friday in The Toronto Star that the team has “to look at other options.”

“We are proud to represent our city and our country, and we hope to be able to do that while playing in Toronto,” Ujiri wrote. “Cities in the United States have been very kind to us — they’ve offered us a home away from home. To them I say: Thank you. To you, I say that I hope we get to tell them we won’t be able to take them up on their generous offer.”

Preseason games — also still in some flux — would start around Dec. 11, and the season begins Dec. 22.

It took the league and the National Basketball Players Association several weeks to amend the collective bargaining agreement and establish the rules for the coming season. The CBA needed extensive revising because of issues caused by the pandemic and changes to the league’s calendar.