The 2019/20 NBA regular season will begin nearly a week later than this season, Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer tweets.
Opening night will be October 22, compared to this season’s October 16 start. This also means the playoffs will begin a week later, O’Connor continues.
The league wanted to make the change to prevent opening night from occurring too early in the calendar year moving forward. The FIBA World Cup also factored into the decision, O’Connor adds.
The NBA has stretched out the regular season in order to accommodate concerns about excessive back-to-backs. This year’s schedule features the fewest back-to-backs in league history and that shouldn’t change next season despite the later starting date. On average, teams will play on consecutive nights 13.3 times this season, with no club playing more than 15 back-to-backs. The league, in cooperation with the Players’ Association, has eliminated instances of teams playing four games in five nights or eight games in 12 nights.
What would be great is if the NBA could get rid of the practice of excessive days off (for advertising and hype) between its playoffs and Finals games.
I agree. A Finals and B Conference Finals should not take a whole month. Two days in between. Three days max.
I agree 100%. Teams should play every other night perhaps even a back to back. When I see game 1 is on a Monday & gm 2 is Thursday I instantly lose interest. Greedy owners & players don’t care about fans. We need to take back sports. Make Sports Great Again
22th lol