NBA Schedule

NBA May Only Offer 50-Game Season If Players Want January 18 Start

October 30th, 2020 at 11:42am CST by Luke Adams

As ESPN reported earlier this week and as NBPA vice president Malcolm Brogdon confirmed during an appearance on The Jump on Thursday, the expectation is that the league’s 2020/21 season will start on either December 22, the date proposed by the NBA, or January 18, the date that a number of players reportedly prefer.

However, if the players insist on starting the season on Martin Luther King Day rather than before Christmas, the NBA may only offer a 50-game season, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times (Twitter link). The league’s December 22 plan would result in a 72-game season.

As Stein explains – and as Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press confirms (via Twitter) – the NBA’s television partners are pushing for the earlier start date and/or a shortened schedule because they don’t want the season to clash with the Tokyo Olympics in July and August. Those TV partners presumably also wouldn’t be enthusiastic about the NBA postseason running into September again and competing with the NFL.

Completing the 2020/21 season in July would allow the NBA to get back to its usual October-to-June calendar for the ’21/22 campaign. However, a 50-game season would result in a substantial pay reduction for players, since their earnings are tied to league revenue, as cap expert Albert Nahmad observes (via Twitter). As such, the NBPA is unlikely to be on board with such a plan.

It sounds as if the NBA and NBPA still have some work to do to bridge the gap on the season’s start date and length. And while the two sides had previously set October 30 (today) as the deadline to negotiate changes to the Collective Bargaining Agreement, Brogdon indicated during his appearance on The Jump yesterday that he expects that deadline to be pushed back for a fourth time. NBPA executive director Michele Roberts conveyed a similar sentiment earlier in the week.

If the league and players’ union move forward with the NBA’s December 22 plan, training camps would begin on or around December 1, so the two sides will need to reach some sort of agreement sooner rather than later. According to Stein (via Twitter), a resolution is expected by next week, since all involved parties are “antsy for clarity.”

Roberts: NBPA “Won’t Be Rushed” On NBA’s Proposal

October 28th, 2020 at 9:54pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA and NBPA agreed earlier this month to push back the deadline that would allow either side to terminate the Collective Bargaining Agreement to October 30. However, with that deadline just two days away, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts tells Shams Charania of The Athletic that the players’ union expects negotiations to continue beyond this Friday.

“The union and the players are analyzing all of the information and will not be rushed,” Roberts said. “We have requested and are receiving data from the parties involved and will work on a counter-proposal as expeditiously as possible. I have absolutely no reason to believe that we will have a decision by Friday. I cannot and will not view Friday as a drop dead date.

“While we are all anxious to resolve these and other substantive issues outstanding between the parties, we plan to proceed at a pace that provides our players ample opportunity to determine the best way to proceed.”

The players, led by the NBPA, are currently reviewing the league’s proposal to begin the 2020/21 season on December 22. The plan is expected to require teams to begin training camps on December 1, which is just over a month away. The NBA Finals came to an end just two weeks ago, and Roberts suggested in her comments to The Athletic that the players are feeling rushed by the process.

“Given all that has to be resolved between now and a December 22 date, factoring that there will be financial risks by a later start date, it defies common sense that it can all be done in time,” Roberts said. “Our players deserve the right to have some runway so that they can plan for a start that soon. The overwhelming response from the players that I have received to this proposal has been negative.”

According to Charania, the NBA told teams on Wednesday that talks between the league and the players have been “productive” so far, and Roberts tells The Athletic that she believes the two sides are close to an agreement on salary cap figures for the 2020/21 season. The cap and tax are expected to remain right around $109MM and $132MM for next season, Charania reports.

However, the league and the union still need to bridge the gaps on issues such as how much player salary will be held in escrow in ’20/21, as well as the proposed December 22 start date, sources tell The Athletic.

According to Charania, commissioner Adam Silver acknowledged on Wednesday in a conversation with team presidents and general managers that the proposed turnaround is quicker than the NBA anticipated or planned, but said that the league’s TV partners have been pushing for a return to the NBA’s usual October-to-June calendar as soon as possible.

“We’re being strongly encouraged by our partners to work closely to a traditional season,” Silver said, per Charania. “It’s almost disconcerting we’re deep into planning for next season so soon. But the sooner we can get back, the better.”

Charania adds that if the players ultimately accept the NBA’s proposed timeline and report to camps at the start of December, the NBA hopes to conduct three-to-four preseason games to allow teams to “reset their arenas” for the regular season. A number of days at the start of camps would also be set aside for coronavirus testing before team activities are permitted, says Charania.

Latest Details On NBA’s Finances, Plans For 2020/21

October 28th, 2020 at 3:17pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA’s revenues dropped 10% to $8.3 billion during the 2019/20 season due to the coronavirus pandemic and the controversy with China, according to a report from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Zach Lowe.

Those losses included $800MM in gate receipts and $400MM in sponsorships and merchandise, sources tell ESPN. The losses related to last year’s spat with China over Daryl Morey‘s tweet in support of Hong Kong protestors were estimated at $200MM.

The NBA did manage to recoup approximately $1.5 billion in revenue by restarting and completing the season during the summer, according to Woj and Lowe, who note that the bubble’s expenses totaled $190MM.

As Albert Nahmad and Eric Pincus point out in a Twitter thread, it sounds as if ESPN’s report is referring to gross income, since basketball related income (BRI) – which is used to determine the salary cap – was never projected to exceed $9 billion.

While the 2019/20 revenue losses are significant, the losses for ’20/21 will likely be more substantial, since the pandemic figures to affect the entire season rather than just the tail end of it. The NBA has told teams to prepare for a potential 40% loss of total revenue if fans can’t return to arenas, according to Wojnarowski and Lowe.

ESPN’s latest report on the state of the NBA includes a few more noteworthy details, so let’s round them up…

The expectation remains that the NBA and NBPA will look to artificially inflate the 2020/21 salary cap to keep it around its current level of $109MM, sources tell ESPN. Following the usual formula and linking it directly to league revenue would result in a drop to about $90MM, according to Wojnarowski and Lowe.
Amid rumors that some NBA players are pushing for a January 18 start to the 2020/21 season, Wojnarowski and Lowe refer to that possibility as an alternative that is “less palatable” to the league than its December 22 proposal. A mid-to-late January start would push the completion of the season into September, forcing the NBA to compete with the Tokyo Olympics and the start of football season, ESPN’s duo observes.
As the NBA plans its 2020/21 season, it is open to the idea of setting up regional “pods” and reducing inter-conference games in order to cut back on teams’ travel, per Woj and Lowe. While the league is hoping to have its teams play games at their home arenas, it’s also open to a modified bubble environment similar to what the MLB did during its postseason, sources tell ESPN.
The NBA is considering releasing its schedule for next season one half at a time in order to maintain flexibility in the event of postponed games and coronavirus outbreaks, according to ESPN. While the All-Star Game may not take place, the league still may look to schedule a mid-season break, which could also be used as a window to make up some postponed games.

Substantial Faction Of Players Pushing For Season To Start In January

October 28th, 2020 at 2:18pm CST by Luke Adams

A “substantial faction” of NBA players – including some stars – are pushing for the 2020/21 regular season to begin on Martin Luther King Day (January 18), rather than on December 22, reports Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link).

As Haynes details, these players would also like to see free agency begin on December 1. Under the league’s current proposal, December 1 has been cited as a possible start date for training camps, with free agency expected to open as early as two or three days after the November 18 draft.

Based on Haynes’ report, it’s not clear how many players are in favor of pushing the start date for the season back to January or which players are leading the charge. But it’s probably safe to assume that those who are advocating most strongly for a delay are members of teams that made playoff runs at Walt Disney World this summer. Presumably those players who have been off since March would welcome an earlier start.

When word broke on Friday that the NBA had changed course on its plans for the 2020/21 season and wanted to schedule opening night for December 22, financial reasons were cited as a major motivating factor. One report suggested that starting the season before Christmas could save the NBA $500MM in revenues that might otherwise be lost.

Saving the league’s December 25 showcase would benefit the league financially; so would playing the postseason in the spring and summer rather than going up against the start of the NFL season, as the league did this year. The NBA has also proposed a 72-game schedule, which would satisfy the criteria for teams’ local television contracts.

The National Basketball Players Association has to sign off on any proposal from the NBA, so if there’s a significant faction of players pushing for a January 18 start, they’ll have some leverage. However, if the league’s financial projections are accurate, there will likely be another significant faction of players who will favor the December 22 start. NBPA leadership will have to try to negotiate some sort of consensus among its members.

NBA Eyeing December 1 For Start Of Training Camps?

October 27th, 2020 at 9:18am CST by Luke Adams

The National Basketball Players Association has yet to approve the NBA’s proposed start date of December 22 for the 2020/21 regular season. However, assuming the two sides opt to move forward with that plan, December 1 appears to be the likeliest opening date for training camps, according to Marc Stein of The New York Times (Twitter link).

A three-week gap between the start of training camps and regular season games is fairly typical by NBA standards. At the start of the 2019/20 season, for instance, most teams opened training camps on October 1, while opening night fell on October 22. When the NBA restarted the season this summer following its four-month hiatus, teams began practicing around July 11 and seeding games began on July 30.

In each of those scenarios, preseason or exhibition games took place between the start of training camps and the start of the regular season schedule. Since the 2020/21 season isn’t expected to be played in a bubble environment, it’s not clear whether the NBA still intends to schedule preseason games or whether they’ll be viewed as unnecessary — that figures to be one of many matters of negotiation between the league and the NBPA.

The eight teams who weren’t invited to the Walt Disney World bubble this summer would likely welcome a December 1 start date for training camps, since they haven’t played in real games since early March. The first few teams eliminated in the summer would have also had a break of about three-and-a-half months.

The turnaround would be more challenging for teams that made deep playoff runs in Orlando. The Heat and Lakers, for instance, played their final game on October 11, so they’d only have 50 days off before reporting back to camp.

A December 1 start date for camps would also mean an extremely condensed free agency period, since the market isn’t expected to open until a few days after the November 18 draft. While most of the top players figure to sign new contracts during the first week of free agency, there would likely be a number of players still finding new NBA homes in December, after camps have already gotten underway.

Notes On NBA’s Plan For 2020/21 Season

October 26th, 2020 at 4:05pm CST by Luke Adams

In recent weeks, it seemed as if the NBA was becoming more and more open to a later start date for the 2020/21 season. Commissioner Adam Silver and NBPA executive director Michele Roberts publicly suggested that the season was unlikely to begin until January, while some reports suggested that a February or March opening night was more realistic.

However, that changed on Friday, when word broke that the league is now looking to begin its ’20/21 campaign before Christmas. According to Marc Berman of The New York Post and Brian Windhorst of ESPN, the NBA’s finance committee played a major role in that abrupt pivot.

“The owners’ finance committee – there’s a group of owners who make up the finance committee – had a meeting and in that meeting they looked at everything and decided ‘You know what? We need to play sooner rather than later,'” Windhorst said on his Hoop Collective podcast, per RealGM.

“It’s interesting Silver talked behind the scenes about waiting until a March time-frame if it meant getting a vaccine,” one NBA insider told Berman. “That’s until the finance committee showed him the numbers.”

Tipping off the 2020/21 season before Christmas would allow the NBA to air games on December 25, which is one of the most important days of the year for the league’s TV partners. It would also allow the league to hold its playoffs in the spring, with the Finals taking place at the very start of summer, instead of in the late-summer and fall like this year. Shams Charania of The Athletic reported over the weekend that the NBA believes its new plan could mean salvaging $500MM in potential revenue.

“The priority is getting back to the October-to-June format for 2021/22,” a source told Berman. “They found out the hard way not enough people watch TV in the summer. The virus and real-life struggles obscure the reality that sports on TV in the summer don’t generate enough viewers.”

Here are a few more items related to the NBA’s tentative plans for the 2020/21 season:

People around the league don’t expect push-back from the players’ union to derail the NBA’s proposed schedule, Windhorst stated on his Hoop Collective podcast. “They’re probably going to have to agree to this,” Windhorst said (per RealGM). “In talking to people on the league side this past week, they didn’t act like getting the players to agree was going to be that big of a stumbling block. I’m sure some people are going to be upset, but I’m not sure what they can do about it.”
Assuming the plan gets the go-ahead, the free agent period and offseason will be accelerated in a major way, which isn’t great news for teams expecting to have major roster turnover this fall, as Berman writes. “This is going to favor teams with stable rosters,” one source told The New York Post.
While it sounds as if the NBA is moving toward a December return, there are still a number of potential obstacles to take into account, according to Chris Mannix of SI.com.
Teams are hoping to get clarity soon about where the salary cap will land for 2020/21, as well as an updated projection for ’21/22. Appearing on today’s episode of The Lowe Post podcast with Zach Lowe, ESPN’s Bobby Marks said that for the time being, most teams are using a $115MM cap estimate for ’21/22.

Examining The NBA’s Plan For The 2020/21 Season

October 24th, 2020 at 4:15pm CST by Arthur Hill

The NBA’s proposal to start next season on December 22 is an admission that league officials don’t expect to be able to fill arenas with fans any time soon, writes John Hollinger of The Athletic.

There had been rumors that the league was looking at Martin Luther King Day or possibly later as a start date to maximize the chances of having a COVID-19 vaccine that would allow large gatherings to resume. Hollinger believes the NBA is now considering the 2020/21 season a “sunk cost” and is focusing on having a normal timetable for 2021/22.

To make that happen, the league needs to fit in a shortened 72-game season in roughly four months — from late December through the end of April. That would leave time for a play-in tournament that’s also included in the league’s plans, followed by two months of playoffs that would finish by early July.

Hollinger notes that a precedent of sorts was set in the 2011/12 season when labor strife forced the league to adopt a 66-game schedule that ran from Christmas Day to April 26. He envisions something similar this year, but without teams being asked to play on three straight nights. Hollinger suggests that non-conference games might be eliminated, cutting down travel significantly, and leaving each team with eight games against each division rival and four games against each conference opponent from outside the division.

All-Star Weekend might be canceled this year, not only for the scheduling benefits but to eliminate the risks of bringing together players from all parts of the country and then sending them back to their teams. The league may also skip the preseason because of the tight window to get ready for games that count.

Hollinger addresses a few other topics the league will have to consider:

There’s virtually no desire to recreate a “bubble” atmosphere like the one in Orlando. It could be done in an emergency to preserve the playoffs or the NBA Finals, but the sentiment throughout the league is that teams should play in their own markets. The one exception may be the Raptors if travel into Canada remains limited. Hollinger suggests KeyBank Center in Buffalo or the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, as possible temporary homes.
The 72-game schedule is enough to for teams to satisfy their regional sports network contracts — most of which call for 65 to 70 televised games — and ensure that stream of revenue won’t be affected. There are also plenty of national television opportunities without stretching the playoffs past Independence Day and risking low ratings again.
Free agency will be more condensed than usual, with November 23, the Monday after the draft, appearing to be a likely starting point. That leaves about a week and a half before the expected opening of training camps.
The proposed changes give NBA players a much better chance of participating in the Olympics if they are able to be held. The Olympic basketball tournament is scheduled to begin July 24, which is at least two weeks after the end of the NBA Finals. Nations seeking the remaining four spots, such as Canada, Lithuania, Serbia, Greece, Croatia and Slovenia, stand a better chance of having their NBA players available when the qualifying tournaments get under way in late June.

NBA Targeting December 22 Start, 72-Game Season

October 23rd, 2020 at 5:19pm CST by Luke Adams

After a report surfaced earlier today suggesting the logistics of the NBA’s 2020/21 season would be discussed during a board of governors meeting, more details have emerged, per Brian Windhorst and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN and Shams Charania of The Athletic.

As Windhorst and Wojnarowski report, the NBA is aiming to begin the ’20/21 season prior to Christmas Day. Charania indicates that December 22 is the current target date, with both ESPN and The Athletic reporting that the league is proposing a truncated 72-game season instead of the usual 82.

The plan would allow for players to participate in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in July and August and would put the NBA on track to resume its usual October-to-June schedule for the 2021/22 season.

Beginning the ’20/21 season just two months from now would almost certainly eliminate the possibility of fans attending games in-person due to ordinances restricting large indoor gatherings in many teams’ home markets.

However, waiting for fan attendance to become viable in all 30 markets likely would’ve resulted in a significant delay for the start of next season, and the NBA now sees more value in beginning the season sooner rather than later.

Charania reports that the league office projected a $500MM revenue value in NBA resumption transpiring a few days before Christmas instead of a later 2021 date. The 2020 NBA Finals concluded on October 11.

While fans may not be permitted in arenas by December, the NBA “strongly prefers” to avoid another single-site bubble, according to Wojnarowski and Windhorst, who say that the league is discussing travel and game schedules that would keep teams in certain marketplaces for longer than normal — teams may play multiple consecutive games against one another, similar to regular-season series in MLB.

The NBA is also hoping to once again implement a play-in tournament prior to the postseason and may propose eliminating All-Star Weekend in 2021 in favor of a two-week break halfway through the season, per ESPN.

All of these details must be approved by the National Basketball Players Association before they become official. Wojnarowski and Windhorst report that the league intends to “move quickly” to negotiate the details with the NBPA and set the plan in motion.

The league has vowed to give players approximately eight weeks notice before the start of the 2020/21 season, which means that the goal would be to wrap up negotiations between the NBA and NBPA sometime next week.

Alex Kirschenbaum contributed to this story.

And-Ones: Mirotic, Schedule, VanVleet, More

October 13th, 2020 at 12:00pm CST by Luke Adams

Former NBA forward and current Barcelona star Nikola Mirotic announced on Twitter that he has tested positive for COVID-19, as Emiliano Carchia of Sportando relays. Mirotic said he feels fine and is following doctors’ instructions, but he won’t be playing in today’s game against Valencia Basket and his availability for Barcelona’s next several games will be jeopardized as well.

As noted in an ESPN story on Mirotic’s positive test, Barcelona head coach Sarunas Jasikevicius and assistant Darius Maskoliunas both tested positive for the coronavirus earlier in October.

Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

John Hollinger of The Athletic takes a shot at predicting what the NBA’s offseason calendar might look like, speculating that free agency will begin right near the end of November (after Thanksgiving) and that Martin Luther King Day (January 18) will be the league’s new target date for opening night of the 2020/21 regular season.
In an interesting piece for The Athletic, a series of beat writers – including Eric Koreen, James Edwards III, and Mike Vorkunov – conducted a mock version of Fred VanVleet‘s free agency negotiations, concluding that the point guard’s floor this offseason is probably a four-year worth at least $80MM. In The Athletic’s exercise, the Raptors beat out the Pistons and Knicks to re-sign VanVleet.
Life isn’t always glamorous for American-born players who head overseas to continue their careers, according to CJ Moore of The Athletic, who spoke to a number of U.S. players that didn’t have great experiences playing in Europe or Asia.

Michele Roberts Talks Free Agency, 2020/21 Season, Cap, More

October 6th, 2020 at 11:37am CST by Luke Adams

Having rescheduled this year’s draft for November 18, the NBA has yet to officially set a start date for 2020’s free agent period. Speaking to Shams Charania of The Athletic, NBPA executive director Michele Roberts suggested that she thinks free agency will probably start no later than December 1 and that the salary cap and tax figures won’t drop too drastically from what was originally projected.

“We can’t go much beyond (December 1) for (free agency),” Roberts said. “We had a projected BRI (basketball-related income), which I think teams appropriately planned for. I don’t think we can deviate much from where we projected the cap to be.

“It may not reflect what people think is the likely BRI, but since I’m of the view this game is not dead and it will rebound, we can do some things with the cap to allow for a free market and not completely destroy what the teams were expecting the cap to be as they were planning ahead. Frankly, I think that’s going to be one of the easier negotiations, figuring out a cap.”

As Charania writes, Roberts met with NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Sunday, and the two sides left that meeting confident that they’ll be able to negotiate agreements on the many cap- and CBA-related issues that must be resolved before the new league year and the 2020/21 season begin.

“It’s amazing what needs to be accomplished in the next six weeks, but it has to be done. I feel sooner rather than later,” Roberts said, adding that she doesn’t believe there’s any real chance of a lockout. “… We’re going to resolve this.”

Charania’s Q&A with Roberts is jam-packed with interesting info and quotes, and is worth checking out in full if you’re an Athletic subscriber. Here are a few more of the most notable takeaways from the conversation:

Roberts still views January as the “absolute earliest” possible start date for the 2020/21 season. “The latter part of January, February makes sense,” she told Charania. “If it’s later than that, if we have a terrible winter because the virus decides to reassert herself, that’s fine.”
Although Roberts and the NBPA share the NBA’s hope that teams can play a full 82-game season in their respective home arenas in 2020/21, she told Charania that the two sides must be “flexible” and “nimble” as it makes plans for next season. “I’m not of the view that we should wait until we think the arenas can open, because this virus, she’s not cooperative at all,” Roberts said.
Silver has expressed some reluctance to change the NBA’s permanent calendar as a result of the COVID-related delays, but Roberts sounds more open to that possibility. “Even before COVID happened, there was a conversation about starting our season later. Why compete with football in the fall? Why don’t we start our season around Christmas?” Roberts said to Charania. “It may very well be that our regular schedule is going to change, not so much because of COVID, but because of the ability to experiment. I wouldn’t bet on returning to the old normal.”
Faced with the possibility of the NBA’s basketball-related income for next season dipping from $8 billion to something like $6 billion, Roberts acknowledged that maintaining the 51/49 split between players and owners will be tricky. “It comes down to if it’s a $6 billion pie and our owners are entitled to 49%, and they’re already committed to $5 billion in player salaries and fixed costs for example, where’s the rest of their money?” she said. “There’s ways to take that $6 billion and get to their 49%. One of the ways to do it is to slash player salaries. I got to deal with a constituency that, you slash their salaries, this may be for many of my guys on the last two or three years of their careers. Is there a way to deal with that?”
Here’s more from Roberts to Charania on the issue of the BRI split: “We’ll never say to the owners: ‘Y’all just going to have to eat the loss.’ Who’s going to do that? They’re not stupid. They’re not just going to say, ‘OK, yeah you’re right, we’re just going to have to lose a couple billion dollars on our own.’ That’s not going to happen. Instead what you say is, ‘Can we figure out a way to manage that so there is no loss, but there isn’t an immediate pay day. Can you withstand some delay in getting your money?’ I have some real life examples of people I know in my life that say that they live paycheck-to-paycheck. And there are other people that can say that they can deal with deferred compensation. You figure it out.”