A mere week ago, NBA players association executive director Michelle Roberts opined that a Dec. 22 start date for the 2020-21 season “defies common sense.”
Well, apparently common sense is overrated, because on Thursday night, the league’s 30 team player representatives unanimously agreed to make that Dec. 22 start date a reality.
We’re now just six and a half weeks away from the next regular season.
And maybe having some fans in the building, too?
Multiple reports Thursday evening confirmed that the players ratified the league’s terms on details of the coming campaign, including a 72-game schedule.
With the deal in place, business will soon be conducted as usual — well, as usual as is possible in the landscape of another wonky (if slightly-less-so) season.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported Thursday night that the next order of business is for the two sides to agree upon revised financial terms for an amended Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Athletic’s Shams Charania added that the salary cap for this season is expected to come in around $109 million (mirroring what it was at this past season), and that the two sides “are discussing a minimum 2 percent annual growth in the salary cap and luxury tax for the duration of the [CBA].”
Charania said that other conversations set to take place will include finalizing health and safety protocols, and settling upon exact percentages for player salaries to be held in escrow.
Once that is all settled, the moratorium on transactions is expected to be lifted a few days prior to the NBA draft, which will take place on Nov. 18 (virtually this year, from the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn.). Free agency will commence within a few days of that. And then training camps will get underway beginning Dec. 1.
Meanwhile, a schedule will need to be quickly devised, and it’s expected to entail baseball-style multi-game road “series” in order to ease travel burdens.
As for when the games get going Dec. 22, it’s possible that they won’t be taking place in entirely empty arenas, either.
“The NBA aims to have arena suites open to fans at 25-to-50 percent capacity for 2020-21 season tipoff, based on local regulations,” Charania previously reported. “An amount of fans — under protocols such as masks, social distancing and coronavirus testing — is a goal to start season.”
Charania added that “courtside” fans could be a possibility as well, though they’d be at least 10 to 12 feet away from the court. The availability of a vaccine could play a role, as well.
Part of the impetus for getting a deal done now was how the timing of not waiting until the new year to start the season was thought to impact league finances going forward.
“The league believes that a Dec. 22 start that includes Christmas Day games on television and allows for a 72-game schedule that finishes before the Summer Olympics in mid-July is worth between $500 million and $1 billion in short- and long-term revenues to the league and players,” sources told ESPN’s Zach Lowe and Wojnarowski.
