Indiana Pacers guard and current National Basketball Players Association vice president Malcolm Brogdon recently shared his thoughts on the huge debate pertaining to the start date of the NBA's 2020-21 season.
Brogdon admitted that the NBPA and the league are in a bit of an impasse right now:
“The way talks are going, this is a super-complicated issue, and there's a lot to balance,” Brogdon said, appearing on ESPN's The Jump (h/t Jenna Ciccotelli of Bleacher Report). “[There's] a lot of minds working on this collaboratively, on both sides. So it's going to take some time.”
The former Rookie of the Year then pointed out that at the moment, the NBA and the NBPA have narrowed it down to two potential dates:
“I think those are the two options,” he said. “We're either going to start MLK Day, which I think a lot of the players are leaning towards, or we're going to start the 22nd, Christmastime. But the huge difference is revenue. Revenue, and trying to get the season back on track to start in that September-October range. So I think calculations are being done on both sides on how much revenue would be lost for each potential date, and we'll have to come to some type of agreement and go from there.”
As Brogdon implied above, money talks here. Pushing back the opening date to January means that the NBA and the teams will miss out on significant revenues from Christmas Day games. The delayed start date will also likely overlap with the start of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which is scheduled to commence on July 23, 2021.
It remains uncertain how this will play out within the next couple of days/weeks, but one thing is certain: a decision needs to be made at the soonest.
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