NBA commissioner Adam Silver informed the Board of Governors on Friday that the league has a July 31 target date for the return of the 2019-20 season, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.
Additionally, Silver reportedly told the Board of Governors that the NBA has four competition scenarios for the restart:
*16 teams, going straight to the playoffs.
*20 teams, with group/stage play.
*22 teams, featuring a play-in tournament for the final playoff seeds.
*30 teams and a 72-game regular season, with a play-in tournament.
So, those league restart competition scenarios are very interesting, and we’d need more clarity on them to assess properly.
But the majority of NBA general managers apparently would like to go straight to the playoffs. The general managers participated in a league survey, and 16 of 30 GMs said they’re in favor of going directly to the playoffs.
Most of the general managers in the survey also said that they would like the season to end by Oct. 1, according to Charania.
If the season begins on July 31 as the NBA hopes, finishing the season by Oct. 1 could be pretty difficult, especially with the scenarios for 22 and 30 teams.
But the players have not been in favor of going straight to the playoffs, due to needing time to get back into the basketball shape — and team chemistry — they expect of themselves, as ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne notes.
The NBA still has *a lot* to figure out about returning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s unlikely there’s a solution that completely pleases everybody involved. But they’re clearly making progress, and now have a target date to shoot for. It also allows players and organizations to have over two (more) months to prepare for real games.