NEWSLETTER
On Thursday afternoon, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the NBA could further push back a number of upcoming dates on the NBA calendar, including the start of the 2020-21 season.
Financial uncertainty – and its many externalities – seems to be the motivating force.
Because of the uncertainty about next season’s projected league revenues, the delay on the October 18 start of free agency would give the NBA and NBPA a better ability to formulate the parameters of 2020-2021 salary cap and luxury tax thresholds. https://t.co/12SNYshVD2
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) August 20, 2020
According to Woj, the league anticipates it’ll need more time to figure out the salary cap situation. The stoppage of play due to the ongoing pandemic has caused the NBA to lose a massive amount of revenue. Commissioner Adam Silver has said previously that fan attendance accounts for 40% of the league’s income, and (as we all know) fans haven’t stepped foot in an NBA arena since March 11th. Fortunately, the league restart will help make up for some of the financial losses, thanks to the TV revenue still coming in, but the league is still facing a stark decrease in the salary cap.
Holding off on some of the upcoming events would not only give the league more time to map out a future plan, but also provide them with a better estimate of the expected losses (Michael: And, of course, the longer they push everything back, the higher likelihood there is that fans could attend games for at least some part of the season depending on the state of the virus).
The NBA season is projected to come to a close – at the latest – on October 13th. Originally, the NBA Draft was scheduled to occur only three days after that on the 16th, followed by the start of free agency on the 18th. I’m sure this would be fun for us fans, but it’s apparently proving to be a bit too quick of a turnaround for the NBA. As Woj notes, if the league doesn’t have a firm grasp of the salary cap by draft night, teams could feel handcuffed: “Front-office executives are privately concerned about the lack of salary cap and luxury tax projections in place before the Oct. 16 draft. Those projections would allow them to make crucial decisions — including on possible trades — with a clearer understanding of the financial ramifications.”
Honestly, that makes plenty of sense. As much as I don’t want to see draft night delayed, I also don’t want teams to feel limited in what they can do. Arturas Karnisovas has already hinted that he’d be willing to make moves on draft night, and gosh darn it, I want him to at least have that opportunity.
In relation to the start of next season, Woj reports that the NBPA has been dropping hints to players that they could start anywhere from late December to sometime in February. I never expected the season to start exactly on December 1st, but I’d prefer we don’t see it stretch all the way until February … that just feels way too late.
In any case, if the NBA does drastically delay the start of the 2020-21 campaign, they should probably also consider moving the voluntary group workouts scheduled for the eight teams left out of the restart. On Tuesday, the Bulls got word that they could in-market bubble for a training-camp-like atmosphere from September 14th to October 6th. We have to assume the league scheduled this with the current dates in mind. Allowing them to work out only to have another big break between action seems a bit counterproductive.
Think about how the calendar looks at this point in time:
• September 14th – October 6th: Voluntary Group Workouts for Delete Eight Teams
• September 30th – October 13th: NBA Finals
• October 16th: NBA Draft
• October 18th: Free Agency Begins
• November ?: Training Camp Begins
• December 1st: 2020-21 Season Begins
Players on the eight teams not in the Orlando restart would have (probably) about a month break between group workouts and preseason training camp. Not bad. Pushing the other dates on that list back (besides the Finals) would create another uncomfortably long break for these players to deal with.
Anyway, this is all just another major obstacle for the NBA to overcome. I believe they can do it, but it’ll take time.
