6:40pm: The NBA has officially confirmed that the NBA Las Vegas Summer League will run from August 8-17 this season (Twitter link). Shams Charania of The Athletic tweets that all 30 NBA teams will participate, playing five games apiece, with a championship game on August 17.
4:01pm: After being canceled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the NBA Las Vegas Summer League will be held from August 8-17 this year, a source tells Sam Gordon of The Las Vegas Review-Journal (Twitter link).
While the NBA has yet to officially confirm Gordon’s report, it lines up with what we heard in February, when ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe stated that the league was aiming to hold its Vegas Summer League sometime in early- to mid-August.
Those dates also make sense in relation to the rest of the NBA’s offseason calendar — two years ago, when the NBA’s 2019/20 league year began on July 1, Vegas Summer League took place from July 5-15. The ’21/22 league year will begin on August 3.
The NBA has typically held smaller Summer Leagues in other cities, including Salt Lake City and Sacramento in 2019, but Vegas is the summer’s main event. In 2019, all 30 NBA franchises fielded teams, with clubs representing China and Croatia joining the mix to make it a 32-team pool.
The Vegas Summer League gives young players, newly-drafted rookies, and undrafted free agents a chance to play big minutes and turn heads in advance of fall training camps.
Vegas summer league is way more fun than any pro games in big arenas