LeBron James capped an unprecedented, historic NBA season by winning a championship in a bubble last month, but he won’t have much time to prepare for his 18th regular season – and he doesn’t seem to approve of the league’s new timeline.
In September, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said his “best guess” was that the new NBA season would not begin until 2021, but the complicated situation has changed. From a financial perspective, the NBA needs to play as many games as possible to maximize revenue, but staging another offseason that stretches past the usual June end-date is complicated by the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, set to begin next July.
The NBA proposed a plan to play a 72-game regular season starting just before Christmas Day, and NBA players approved the plan with a vote on Thursday. The 2020-21 season will begin on December 22nd, just 71 days after the end of the NBA Finals.
James was watching ESPN and took a photo of his TV, which was displaying a stat about the shortest offseasons ever to occur in the big four sports. The current NBA offseason is set to be 71 days, far shorter than any other offseason in history.
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