Source: NBA Considering 70-Game Season in July
DALLAS - The NBA has on its front burner of COVID-19 salvation solutions a completion of a shortened 70-game season that would begin in July and lead to summer playoffs, a league source tells DallasBasketball.com.
The potential solutions are “fluid,” one source said, adding that a variety of ideas are expected to be discussed in a coming conference call involving team GMs and possibly owners.
Among the agenda items as we understand them:
*The July re-start if a season that would total 70 games. Contenders for the NBA Playoffs world get one last chance to jostle for position ... and so would lottery teams. Additionally, there may be a contractual issue with teams' local TV contracts that is tied to 70 games.
*If the realities of the pandemic do not allow for a July re-start, an August re-launch is is play - maybe a launch straight into the playoffs.
*There has been much speculation about one city housing all of the upcoming games. Orlando and Las Vegas are among the possibilities, but others will be proposed.
*The players who have left their home cities (or even left the country, as with Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic) would likely be given ample time to return, quarantine and acclimate.
*Mavs owner Mark Cuban's proposal that NBA seasons begin on Christmas Day - not just post-COVID-19 but permanently - is getting traction. Cuban tells DallasBasketball.com, on that idea and all of the above in general, "Nothing is set. There is lots of scatter-shooting of ideas.''
