It’s all but stamped and sealed: Tipoff for the 2020-21 NBA season is less than two months away.
The National Basketball Players Association voted Wednesday to approve the plan of a Dec. 22 start of a 72-game season, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Financial negotiations with the CBA will continue into next week, according to Wojnarowski.
With this start date, the season will end in mid-May and the Finals can be expected to conclude around July 21, right before the Summer Olympics begin.
The league believes that starting the season in December, which will allow the NBA to make its Christmas money and avoid clashing with the Olympics, can save the leave between $500 million to $1 billion in revenue, according to ESPN.
The players had debated delaying the start of the season for another month to begin around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is Jan. 18.
A typical offseason for non-playoff teams is mid-April through mid-October, while Finals teams would go from mid-June to mid-October. Bubble teams this season have anywhere from a two to four month break, about half the normal offseason.
The revenue understanding won out.
There is expected to be a 17% to 18% withholding of player salaries in escrow over the next two seasons with the expectation that the loss of usual ticket sales and gate receipts, which make up about 40% of revenue, will severely impact league income. Charania reported that the league hopes to decrease the amount held in escrow to 10%, the usual amount, in three seasons.
The NBA and NBPA will now work to finalize health and safety protocols for the 2020-21 season. Sides are discussing a 17-to-18 percent escrow of player salaries over the next two years — with the hope the withholding amount is down to normal 10 percent in 2022-23. https://t.co/fuv9otV3vl
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) November 6, 2020
The salary cap is expected to remain at $109 million this coming season, according to Charania.
Free agency may be moved up to make it easier for teams to put together their rosters by the time training camp begins on Dec. 1, Wojnarowski tweeted.
The NBA draft is scheduled to take place Nov. 18.
And from there, the country has a clear sight to the start of the NBA season: Dec. 22.