Back in 2011, the NBA endured its fourth lockout in league history. It took 161 days for the league’s owners and the NBA Players Association to hammer out and ratify a new collective bargaining agreement, and as a result, each team played just 66 games that season.
With the lockout lasting well into the fall, once the agreement was ratified, it was learned that the 2011-12 NBA season would begin on Christmas Day. A byproduct of the unfortunately delayed beginning of the season was that the league didn’t have to compete directly with the NFL for eyeballs. By Christmas, traditionally, the NFL season is winding down and a gross majority of casual basketball fans would begin tuning in during the winter anyway — after football season had begun to wind down.
Since then, the NBA has been quietly considering the merits of altering the league’s schedule. Rather than beginning in October and ending in June, there was at least some thought of permanently shifting the NBA schedule to run from December to August.
Now, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the league is being forced to consider that option for the 2020-21 season. This comes primarily as a result of the league wanting to complete its 2019-20 season despite a suspension of play that will likely last well into the summer months.
According to Wojnarowski’s report, however, the idea was discussed and is being considered independent of a potential return to play.
As ownership support grows for the idea, commissioner Adam Silver and the NBA board of governors continued discussions Friday about delaying the start of the 2020-21 season until December, sources told ESPN.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA’s thinking and planning has progressed on the idea independent of whether the 2019-20 season resumes and is completed, sources said.
The thinking behind this is pretty straightforward: the longer the league waits to begin the season is the more possible it is that the league can reduce its economic losses by playing games with no fans in attendance.
At this point, it’s a foregone conclusion that any potential completion of the 2019-20 season will have to occur in remote locations without fans. Similarly, it’s difficult to imagine the thought of bringing tens of thousands of fans together to watch sporting events in the coming months.
Delaying the beginning of the 2020-21 season at least allows the league to digest the increasing availability of testing, potential vaccines and other medical advancements that could inform its decision making.
For the NBA, the crux of the idea to delay the start of next season centers on the ability to buy more time to get fans back into arenas for the most possible games, sources said.
There are no imminent plans to make a decision on the calendar, and this discussion will continue, sources said…
“If you start in December, that doesn’t mean the people are coming back in December, but maybe they’re back by March,” one member of the board of governors told ESPN on Friday.
If the NBA does move forward with altering its schedule, it may harm the ability of players who are on teams which advance far into the playoffs from competing in international competitions. The 2020 Olympics, for example, were scheduled to begin on July 23 while the FIBA World Cup has typically begun in late August.
At this point, however, the NBA will obviously consider its priorities first and make its decision one day at a time.