NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated his “best guess” is that the league will not begin its next season up until 2021, highlighting that “the objective is to play a basic season.”
Silver went over the NBAs prepare for the 2020-21 season Tuesday as part of a wide-ranging interview with CNN.
The NBA revealed previously this year that the tentative start date for the 2020-21 season was Dec. 1, but Silver acknowledged last month that the date was “feeling a bit early to me.”
1 RelatedSilver said Tuesday that the NBA had actually hoped as just recently as a week ago that “the earliest we would start is Christmas of this year,” however he then said that as more coronavirus-related information appears, he believes that the league will “be much better off getting into January.”
Silver clarified that a “basic season” would consist of an 82-game regular season and complete postseason, and he kept in mind that “the goal would be to play games in home arenas in front of fans.”
” But theres still a lot that we require to learn in regards to fast screening, for instance,” Silver said. “Would that be a means of getting fans into our structures? Will there be other defenses?”
Silver said the NBA is “plainly discovering a lot from other sports,” mentioning COVID-19 procedures being utilized by Major League Baseball, the NFL and major college sports programs.
“Theres great deals of brand-new details out there in the market that were aiming to soak up,” he stated.
The NBA currently has actually delayed the date of the 2020 draft to Nov. 18, which allows the league and players union to work out changes to the collective bargaining arrangement and settle on 2020-21 wage cap and high-end tax thresholds.
Silver has actually previously said approximately 40% of the leagues once-projected $8 billion in income is tied to having fans in arenas.