The next NBA season may not start until January, commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday morning in an interview with Bob Costas on CNN.
When asked for his thoughts on when the season will begin, and if there would be any format changes, Silver said his best guess is it will not begin until at least January.
Because the coronavirus caused the 2019-20 season to go on hiatus for about four months (from March 11, when play was initially suspended, to early July, when 22 teams arrived in the Orlando bubble) the start date for the 2020-21 season originally was pushed to Dec. 1.
“My best guess is that even though as you said it’ll be the 2021 season that that season won’t start until ’21,” Silver said. “We said a week ago or so that the earliest we would start is Christmas of this year. But the more I’m learning even listening to Dr. (Anthony) Fauci this morning, I continue to believe that we’re going to be better off getting into January.”
Silver also said that the goal is to play a standard, 82-game season with fans permitted to attend. At the time, it’s unclear if that would be feasible in indoor arenas, with the social distancing, ventilation and disinfecting guidelines the CDC is recommending for events and gatherings.
“The goal for us next season is to play a standard season to your — other part of your question, 82-game season and playoffs,” Silver said. “And further, the goal would be to play games in home arenas in front of fans, but there’s still a lot that we need to learn in terms of rapid testing for example. Would that be a means of getting fans into our buildings, will there be other protections? Some of the things we’re learning down in Orlando currently on the campus down there and also clearly learning a lot from other sports, what baseball is currently doing, what football is doing sort of as college sports is now — has begun playing.
“So, there’s a lot of new information out there in the marketplace that we’re looking to absorb. But the goal is to play a standard season and incidentally when we went into our planning of this current season we played a bit of an unusual finish to the regular season, but it was very important to the players and to the league and the teams that we play our standard playoffs which is what we’re in the process of doing now.”
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