Mavs Cuban: NBA Season Should Start On Christmas
DALLAS - Not only due to the 2019-20 NBA season's COVID-19-forced oddity, but due to the dollars and sense of it all, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has long thought the league should back up the start of NBA's regular season to the point it's a sort of "double holiday.''
“I’ve been saying that for 15 years,” Cuban said on Pardon My Take. “... Just go wholeheartedly starting Christmas Day.”
Christmas Day, of course, is when many people think the NBA "unofficially'' starts. Attention begins to turn toward basketball ... in tandem with the attention already focused on the NFL.
Cuban says his idea has always "been shot down'' is "this thing called HUT (households using televisions). And during the summer, that drops. … In the past, that was a big deal. So you wanted to end (the NBA season) by June so you could maximize the people watching TV.
“But … TV’s changed.”
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Cuban seems once again prepared to lobby to move the start of the season to Christmas Day. In this moment, there is some sense to it as the league is being forced by the pandemic to consider all post-hiatus options. But bigger picture? Strategically, it's all about changing the calendar so as to avoid, as much as is realistically possible, banging heads with football.
“We’re going to have a lot more options and a lot more flexibility to start later and end later,” Cuban said. “And rather than taking on football with our first early games, let’s let them (the NFL) get close to playoffs and just go wholeheartedly starting Christmas Day.”
