The NBA has released key details about how the 2020-21 season will work with scheduling designed to minimize travel due to the ongoing pandemic.
In a press release circulated by the NBA, the league shared that every team will play the others in their conference three times for a total of 42 games with at least one home game per series.
Within each division in that conference, the league will decide randomly which teams get more home games.
The NBA also shared that all five teams within a division “will play all five teams from one other intraconference division twice at home, and all five teams from the remaining intraconference division twice on the road.”
Some details on the NBA’s 72-game schedule pic.twitter.com/UXOKYVGqQw
— Mark Medina (@MarkG_Medina) November 18, 2020
Teams will play two games with each team in their conference (so, for the Boston Celtics, a pair of games with each of the other 15 East teams) for a total of 30 games to complete the 72-game schedule, split home and road.
Scheduling for the season will be released in halves.
The first wave will come in early December close to training camp, and the second “during the latter part of the First Half” of the 2020-21 schedule to allow for flexibility in making up any potentially canceled games.
Could the Celtics sign-and-trade Gordon Hayward for … no one? https://t.co/J5G5JQCMTu
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) November 18, 2020
All-Star week will be from March 5th to 10th, 2021 — the planned halfway point of the season.
The league’s Board of Governors also approved a new version of the play-in tournament will pit the teams with the seventh through tenth-best winning percentage in each contest against one another ahead of the playoffs to determine which teams make the seventh and eight seeds for the postseason.
The seventh- and eighth-ranked teams will face one another to lock in the seventh seed, and the loser will join those teams who held the ninth- and tenth-best records in a fight for the eighth that will require to wins over the competing teams to secure.
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