The NBA is set to return on July 31 and we can’t be happier about it. The last time we watched basketball was on March 12 before Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the league to suspend the season.
On Thursday, team owners voted to restart the season with a 22-team league starting at the end of July. The campaign will finish in October, as the league is aiming at Oct. 12 for the last possible day of the NBA Finals. That will give the league 73 days to play out the rest of the season, the playoffs and the Finals.
https://twitter.com/jgsiegel/status/1268245217175408640
This calendar would see the two finalists of this season playing a lot of games on their way to the Finals. Under these conditions, an NBA Finals team could play as many as 36 games (four rounds of seven plus the eight regular-season games) to advance round after round and compete for the championship. Indeed, they won’t travel, but they will be playing under playoffs intensity the majority of the games.
That’s definitely a lot. It’s important to note that these players didn’t play a single game in four months and will enter two months full of intensity. It is a hard task and it would be interesting to see how coaches will manage that situation. At some point, it will be more about who wants the title the most and not about which team has the best names.
