It’s been less than two weeks since the end of the longest season in NBA history. It also appears there’s a very good chance it will be followed by the shortest offseason in NBA history. The NBA has been discussing the start of the season with the NBPA for a while now, agreeing to extend their deadline for discussions until October 30, which is a week from now. Additional reporting from Friday indicates both sides are getting closer to an agreement, including one that could have us watching NBA basketball again in 2020.
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Zach Lowe reported on Friday that the NBA’s Board of Governors will meet in hopes to start the next season as soon as possible, including a possible plan to start the season on Christmas Day. A few minutes after the ESPN report, Marc Stein of The New York Times reported the Christmas Day concept is “gaining momentum.”
It’s not hard to see why the league wants to start the season as soon as possible. It remains to be seen what the NBPA thinks, but there are 8 teams that haven’t played a real game in over seven months. There are a lot of reasons why the league might do this, perhaps most of all, to not have so many important games coincide with the NFL season. The other is that while they want to have fans in arenas, there is still no vaccine yet for the coronavirus, and realistically, there’s not going to be a safe way to have fans in basketball arenas unless right away. Or at least the way the NBA wants to make the most money they can.
Therefore, maintaining some semblance of the traditional league calendar heading into what they hope can be a fully charged 2021-22 season seems to be the preferred course of action for most owners. Of course, some want to see higher margins by waiting until they can have fans, but the likelihood of that being a realistically safe possibility by the spring seems impossible to bet on at present time.
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