Even though the start of the 2020-21 NBA season will all but certainly be delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, that apparently may not prevent the league from playing a full season’s worth of games.
“Everything I have been told is that there is expected to be a full 82 game schedule for 20-21. Folks I have spoken to think they can condense the 20-21 schedule a bit and get back close to the normal calendar for 21-22. A permanent move of the NBA calendar will take a while,” tweeted Yahoo’s Keith Smith.
Even before COVID-19 forced the season into hiatus on March 11, the idea of pushing back the start to the NBA schedule was being spearheaded by Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin, who unveiled his proposal to compete against baseball more than football at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston on March 6.
A few weeks back, Marc Stein of the New York Times reported that the 2020-21 season may be looking at Christmas Day tip-off:
“Some key N.B.A. figures welcome an experiment with radical changes to the schedule, such as contesting the N.B.A. finals in August, pushing free agency into September and starting the 2020-21 season on Christmas Day. It is hardly unanimous, but there is a faction eager to turn the delay forced upon the league by the coronavirus outbreak into an unexpected testing ground,” wrote Stein.
A Christmas start last occurred after the lockout in 2011. In that instance, though, the league played a condensed 66-game slate.
In 1999, the regular season was shortened to 50 games after an extended work stoppage.
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