At this point, there’s no reason to believe that the 2020-21 NBA season is in jeopardy, but it is fair to say that we don’t know when it’s going to begin.
The league’s owners want next season to begin on Dec. 22, while the players are in favor of delaying the season for an additional month and beginning on or around Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which is January 18, 2021.
On Friday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski penned a report in which he laid out the owners’ case for wanting to start next season so soon after the 2019-20 season concluded. For the record, under the owners’ proposal, there will have been seven weeks from the time the 2020 Finals concluded to when players would report for training camp — less than half the usual duration.
The day after Wojnarowski’s report, Michele Roberts, the executive director of the NBA players union, spoke with veteran NBA reporter Chris Sheridan of BasketballNews.com about the current impasse and was rather frank about its underlying cause.
“…I hate to say it because it is so predictable – but it’s revenue, the revenue split. Our game has taken a huge hit because of the virus. The projections that we confidently had about the game’s growth, both this year and last year and next year and the year after that, those things are not going to happen… So we’ve got to figure out a way to live in an environment in which billions of dollars we expected to enjoy are no longer here.”
Immediately thereafter, Roberts seemed to express some confidence in the fact that the sides would be over to figure out when to begin next season and how many games to play once the underlying financial issues have been worked out.
The early reports suggest that the league would like a 72-game season while the players — who are concerned about when the season will begin — might lean toward a 50-game season beginning in January.
Still, Roberts didn’t seem too concerned.
“Everyone is confident the game will rebound, but until it rebounds, how do we deal with this revenue shortage?… it’s just very important that the parties find a way to deal with it where everyone walks away thinking, ‘I’ve taken my share of the pay, have you?’ If we get past that, then almost everything else we can agree on – how many games, when will we start, are we going to get there?
The 2020 NBA Draft is scheduled for Nov. 18. The league’s incoming class of rookies will be entering an interesting situation, to say the least.
Even more than usual, Roberts is carrying a lot on her capable shoulders.