Baseball is back with 60 games, what if the NBA only played 30 games?

Major League Baseball announced its intent Tuesday night to start the 2020 season in late July with a condensed, 60 game season.

While baseball fans will surely rejoice with the sport's return, a 60 game season is just a fraction of the 162 game season MLB teams usually play. So what if the NBA cut its season down by the same percentage and played just 30 games?

The Toronto Raptors played their 30th game on December 23, 2019, losing 120-115 in overtime to the Indiana Pacers, to move to 21-9 on the season.

If the season had ended that day, the standings would have looked like this:

Eastern Conference:

Western Conference:

In the East, all eight teams currently in playoff spots as of the COIVD-19 pause would have made the playoffs with the standings just slightly different. Most notably, the Raptors were in fourth, behind the Boston Celtics and Miami Heat.

In the West, things look a little more jumbled up. The Grizzlies turned around their season and shot up from the 12th spot to the eighth seed as of the NBA stoppage, and Portland fell one spot out of the playoffs from the eighth spot to the ninth spot. Closer to the top of the conference, Los Angeles Clippers found their groove and jumped into the second seed, while the Rockets dropped off a bit, falling to the sixth seed.

The notion of shortening the NBA season has been discussed at length over the recent years as teams have increasingly rested star players for games throughout the year. While 30 games is an unrealistically low number, the truth is the best teams usually rise to the top early and stay there while the worst teams fall off early and typically never recover.