The NBA’s board of governors are expected to approve a league proposal on a 22-team format to restart the season in Orlando, Florida. Commissioner Adam Silver shared the broad details of the plan to resume.
The plan includes 13 Western Conference teams and nine Eastern Conference teams, eight regular-season games, a possible play-in tournament for the eighth seed, and playoffs.
The additional six teams are being added to the resumption of play to settle the debate that they are close to making the playoffs prior to the pause midseason. So teams within 6 games of the 8th seed in each conference are invited, Meaning New Orleans, San Antonio, Portland, Sacramento, Phoenix and Washington will join the 16 playoff teams when play resumes on July 31st.
The play-in tournament will include the 8th and 9th seeds, only if the ninth seed finishes the regular season within four games of the eighth. In that scenario, the No. 8 seed enters a double-elimination tournament, and the No. 9 seed a single-elimination tournament, sources said.
The NBA will allow teams to hold social distant practices at their home court facilities, then allow full training camps to be held in Orlando later in July.
The date that a hypothetical Game 7 would be held would be October 12th. Usually during October teams are partaking in training camps and preseason games. Majority of the sports world’s attention is on Post season baseball, college Football and the NFL. So it will be interesting to see how the NBA Finals ratings are impacted when stacked up against those sports.
The plan in place seems to have solved majority of the issues at hand, but there are a few reasons to be worried.
The 8 teams that did not fit into the guidelines to return to play have raised concerns with not being able to play NBA games for 9 whole month period. They are worried how it will impact them both financially and competitively when the next season begins in likely December, 2020.
It is a fair concern, the league hasn’t seen a 9 month hiatus before and these teams will be at a disadvantage for the 2020-2021 season. The NBA and NBA Players Association will continue dialogue to solve the unresolved issues.
For teams who do return, life will be different. The NBA will focus on safety first and protocols can not be broken.
They will be placed in a bubble life, stuck on the Disney grounds. The NBA will provide daily testing to everyone involved in the production of the games.
If a player tests positive for the virus, the league’s intent would be to remove that player from the team to quarantine and treat individually and continue to test other team members as they play on.
Employees at the Disney resort will have to maintain similar protocols. For example, no staff will be allowed into players’ rooms, and hallways will be carefully managed to avoid crowding.
Barring another Covid-19 outbreak, we will have a competition to the 2019-2020 NBA season, and a champion will be crowned. At this point I think that is what every NBA fan is hoping for, to get this strange season past us.
