The 2019-20 NBA season has been on hiatus since early March due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the league has since been considering all sorts of ways to resume play. Since March 12, there have been some steps toward resumption with the league, Board of Governors, and Players’ Association finding themselves in frequent discussion recently regarding how to proceed safely.
According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the NBA is currently targeting July 31 as a date to resume the season. It is unclear what format the season will assume, although reports of a bubble league in Orlando seem to be leading the way.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the league office informed Board of Governors that July 31 is a target date for return of season, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 29, 2020
The news comes after ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted that the Board of Governors had a two-hour call with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to discuss proposals for the rest of the season. Earlier today, Charania also tweeted four competition scenarios for restart that the Board of Governors discussed in that call. Additionally, an ESPN report was published on Friday, which found that a majority of NBA general managers favored restarting the season by going straight into the playoffs.
Sources: The NBA discussed four competition scenarios for restart with Board of Governors today:
– 16 teams: Directly to playoffs
– 20: Group/stage play
– 22: Games to determine seeding, play-in tournament for final seed(s)
– 30: 72-game regular season, with play-in tourney— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 29, 2020
While there is no guarantee that games will tip back off on July 31, this is the first date we’ve seen thrown out for when we could get back to games. We’ll have to see if that holds firm, and Wojnarowski reported on Friday that a decision is expected “inside the next week.”