AUGUST 28, 6:41am: Reports from Jonathan Feigen of The Houston Chronicle and Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, among others, continue to point to Saturday as the day when the NBA’s postseason is on track to resume. We’re still waiting for official word from the league and the NBPA, but it appears increasingly unlikely that Friday’s games will be played as scheduled.
AUGUST 27, 1:28pm: NBA spokesperson Mike Bass has issued a statement confirming that Thursday’s games have been postponed and indicating that the league is hopeful to resume play either Friday or Saturday.
As reported by Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link) and confirmed by Bass, a meeting will take place today at 5:00pm eastern time to discuss the resumption.
Two players from each remaining playoff team, the owners of those 13 teams, commissioner Adam Silver, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts, and Hornets owner Michael Jordan (chair of the labor relations committee) will take part in that meeting, per Goodwill.
AUGUST 27, 1:07pm: The NBA playoffs are expected to resume on Saturday, according to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter link).
Following Wednesday’s boycotts, NBA players decided today that they would resume the season. However, Thursday’s games are being postponed and it sounds like Friday’s will be as well.
According to Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe (Twitter link), the Celtics/Raptors second-round series that had been scheduled to begin on Thursday is now expected to tip off on Sunday. Tania Ganguli of The Los Angeles Times notes (via Twitter) that nothing is official yet, but says it sounds like the Lakers and Trail Blazers will play Game 5 of their first-round series on Saturday.
While no other dates have been confirmed so far, it seems safe to assume that the games originally scheduled for Wednesday would take place on Saturday, with Thursday’s contests being rescheduled to Sunday.
That would mean that Game 5 in two other playoff series – Bucks/Magic and Rockets/Thunder – would take place on Saturday, with the Jazz/Nuggets and Clippers/Mavericks playing Game 6 of their respective series on Sunday.
With meetings between players and team owners scheduled to take place later today, we’ll have to wait for official word from the NBA before locking anything in.
That works out for Houston getting Russ back.
Before the games on Wednesday were boycotted/postponed, he was upgraded from out to questionable. So hopefully getting three extra days to prepare for game 5 will make enough difference for him to be able to play.
Not cynically….what changed ? The boycott was brilliant to bring attention…a statement now needs to accompany it so it doesn’t hollow out.
The issue is not exactly buried. They were boycotting to bring attention to a story that was already plastered all over front pages and headlining TV news on almost every network. The issue had attention.
As I said, I understand their anger, but this was the act of petulant children instead of level-headed adults. It was never going to solve anything other than get attention for THEM.
It generated more attention. It generated additional outrage. And it likely spooked the league as well as the owners.
Boycotting in and of itself was never going to have an outright effect, but that doesn’t mean it was entirely pointless. This should put a thought in the back of everyone’s mind moving forward.
After all, next season is not set in stone. If the players were smart, they would threaten to sit it out unless change would come to fruition, and leave the NBA and the owners to flex their money and influence to pressure politicians into actually doing something for a change.
If they don’t follow through with something more substantive at some point, though, you will have been right.
Leave the NBA? And go where? Sure LeBron and other vets have more than enough money to retire in theory, but I doubt most players could afford to give up such a lucrative job. It’s not like most of them have a highly demanded education to fall back on or anything.
If some players left the NBA, they would be replaced more quickly than you can even imagine. None of them, not LeBron, not Kawhi, are bigger than the league. Even Jordan was replaced and none of these guys are bigger than Jordan.
just because they can replace doesnt mean fans would like it in tune in. fans come to see the stars. not some avg joe
Who said anything about leaving the NBA? The idea was to not play next season with the expectation that the league would get spooked and have to flex its muscles in response. Are you telling me the league would really be willing to play that game of chicken over the long run? Don’t be so sure.
Obviously, if only a handful of players were to agree to this the idea couldn’t possibly work, but if a significant number or, better yet, a majority of players would agree the NBA couldn’t possibly resume, if only because fans wouldn’t bother to tune in to watch G-league and international players.
Again, the point isn’t to leave the NBA. The point is to force the NBA’s hand using the leverage the players have. It isn’t a move devoid of risk to be sure, but if the players are serious about getting something done I think this is one way to go. The main thing holding the players back is fear, which I can understand given the amount of money involved.
Moreover, my scenario would involve letting the league know about such intentions after the conclusion of the postseason, which would given the NBA a few months to figure out what it can or wants to do. The players could always reserve course down the line should they desire to.
I disagree. When you’re all over the news already on every outlet and the NG is called in, you’ve gotten the maximum amount of attention you were going to get. They put attention on themselves and not in a good way after deciding something like 24 hours that protesting the season wasn’t gonna help them at all. So they hit reverse real quick.
It wasn’t a boycott. It was a postponement that accomplished nothing besides getting them a couple days off and even lower ratings going forward
It got a ton of press around the issue they were concerned about and got a lot of people talking about it. Including you.
You are giving them way too much credit. Taking a couple days off was meaningless. Once they realized the monetary impact they came crawling back
Not really. It was the Bucks who got everything started and the other teams likely felt they had to follow suit, but it’s been clear from the start many players were not happy about this sort of off-the-wall decision.
Can’t blame folks from walking back something they had no intention of doing in the first place.
Again…you’re talking about it.
Players: ” we are going to boycott!”
NBA and coaches: we aren’t doing too well with viewership department…it could affect a lot of things, including $$$.
Players: “we will reschedule the games!”
Ratings are actually fine the blycott community is trying to push that narrative, so they can feel important. The REAL reason they’re coming back to play is because if they dont the league will lose 700 million. And that will affect their salaries.
“Brilliant”?!?!? Lol
I think it’s more of a warning shot than anything else. By itself, it won’t accomplish much, but perhaps down the line, the players will take their strike up a notch or find another way to impact things.
the NBA….as all other sports….just did the equivalent of changing their FB page to say BLM or black the profile pic out.
accomplished nothing other than delaying the playoffs.
if you felt a certain way about the incident, what pro sports did had zero impact on changing that.
So. They just moved the games to the weekend. They didn’t really boycott or protest.
Well, that’s one way to try to get viewership up. Fake outrage and move games to a day more people can potentially watch them.
The NBA’s self inflicted “shoot yourself in the foot” delay costing them 3 days is horrible. Every day matters and they are already going to start next season late as it is. If the players decide in a few weeks to take a few days off again to be divas, it will compromise next season even more.
Nonsense. The NBA would be happy to start next season later if it would mean fans in the seats. There isn’t a whole lot at risk by losing 3 days.
3 days is a very big deal when you are going to have two seasons shortened by COVID.
And yet the league has pushed back its original early-Dec start date to a late-Dec through February potential date range. Doesn’t sound too urgent to me. The future season and perhaps beyond are going to be a mess regardless.
Also, I don’t know how this is the league’s fault. What were they go to do, go against the players and incur horrible publicity?
3 whole days, that’s like .8% of an entire year. Huge deal.
2020 is not a normal year
3 days in a continuing bubble with nervous coworkers but no work is not pleasant and for owners not cheap. It was always going to be hard to find justification besides emotion, which continues the downward spiral.
Stop the idiocy and let their families in!
Of course they want paid, who doesn’t? How is that bad? What are they gathered there for?
What happens when all of those families start getting sick. They also have no legal right to order families to stay in the bubble. The issue isn’t about letting them in, it’s about them going out and ruining the entire bubble concept.
They’re getting paid accordingly. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also what they agreed to when they decided they were okay with playing in a bubble.
They can survive a little longer me thinks.
Not surprised, they’re just following the money. Lots of activists until it hits their bank accounts.
Players should take advantage of these times. Get the TV media. To give them media time. Shows promoting the history of these issues. Sports and politics. The systemic racism that always been a part of process. There are 3 outlets that can produce few hours of this. TNT, NBATV, ESPN all have benefited from basketball. Time to spread the programming. The Playoffs and Pandemic it’s the right time. Use the bubble since you have them all there.
I just want to see real games. I’m starting to lose interest. I always believed even before Virus. That these playoffs would be very competitive.