NBA is Officially Back (Official Thread)

[nabbs]

Alright the vote on the finalized plan is at 12:30 EST on Thursday. Mods pin this thread.


It will literally be the official announcement on the return of the 2019-2020 NBA season

[fbalmeida]

I'm curious as to what the play-in tournament will look like with 22 teams. With 20, it seemed elementary to have 4 groups of 5 teams. With 22 teams It's totally unclear at this point. I think it's important that the play-in tournament renders no significant advantage to any team in terms of the number of games they play in preparation.

[nabbs]

Lot of people are complaining about the lack of off season but let’s keep in mind these guys just got an entire off season worth of rest right now.


If we chart out the continuation of this season + the entirety of next season (so beginning of 2020 to the end of 2021):

October 22nd 2019 - March 9th 2020 (4.5 months)

4.5 month break

July 31st 2020 - October 12th 2020 (2.5 months)

2.5 month break

December 25th 2020 - August 25th 2021 (8 months)

So in 2 years, you play 15 months of basketball with 7 months off in total. A typical 2 year stretch of basketball is 16 months of playing + 8 months off in total for an offseason

[SHFT]

please please please please please make the official start of the season in December going forward.

[The Nutz]

I'm curious as to what the play-in tournament will look like with 22 teams. With 20, it seemed elementary to have 4 groups of 5 teams. With 22 teams It's totally unclear at this point. I think it's important that the play-in tournament renders no significant advantage to any team in terms of the number of games they play in preparation.

I don't think groups were ever an option, the owners voted against that weeks ago. I think they will have a few regular season games, a play in for the 8th seed, and then playoffs.

[Zeno]

please please please please please make the official start of the season in December going forward.

I don’t see how they shift it back again unless they decide to drastically shorten next season. Their desperation in the current situation to preserve revenue makes that extremely unlikely.

[WuTang_CMB]

I'm curious as to what the play-in tournament will look like with 22 teams. With 20, it seemed elementary to have 4 groups of 5 teams. With 22 teams It's totally unclear at this point. I think it's important that the play-in tournament renders no significant advantage to any team in terms of the number of games they play in preparation.

No go on group stage. no one wants it. It would only make sense if there wasn't any RS games played.

[WuTang_CMB]

please please please please please make the official start of the season in December going forward.

I don’t see how they shift it back again unless they decide to drastically shorten next season. Their desperation in the current situation to preserve revenue makes that extremely unlikely.

BOSTON -- Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin has a plan to increase the NBA's ratings: start and end the season two months later.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28852950/hawks-steve-koonin-says-starting-nba-season-december-help-ratings
Koonin spoke Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston on a panel about possible changes to the league's schedule. The panel was moderated by ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz.

"Relevance equals revenue," Koonin said. "We've got to create the most relevance, and the revenue will fix itself.

Under Koonin's proposal, the start of the NBA season would shift from mid-October to mid-December, after college football has completed its regular season and has begun its bowl season. More important, the shift would allow the NBA to avoid having to compete with the NFL's regular season, as it currently does in the first 2½ months before the "unofficial" start to the league's calendar on Christmas Day.

EDITOR'S PICKS

NBA's best 25 under 25: Ranking future superstars

NBA playoff predictions: Most likely seeds and best matchups
Meanwhile, the NBA Finals would take place sometime in August rather than June, with the draft and free agency to come after that. That would again allow the NBA to dominate more of the summer months, when it is going up against only Major League Baseball, instead of fighting with football for territory.

"A big piece is you don't have to reinvent the wheel to enhance ratings," Koonin said. "Sometimes, moving away from competition is a great way to grow ratings.

"If King Kong is at your door, you might go out the back door, rather than go out the front and engage in a hand-to-hand fight with King Kong. Many times, at the start of the NBA season, we are competing with arguably the best Thursday Night Football game with the NBA on TNT, our marquee broadcast, and we get crushed and we wonder why.

"It's because at the beginning of the season, there's very little relevance for the NBA. The relevance is now. That's when people are talking about it."

"Television launches new shows in the fall because that's when the new models of cars are introduced," said Koonin, who spent more than a decade running Turner's family of networks before coming to the Hawks. "The reason the Finals are in June is because there are more ad dollars in the second [fiscal] quarter. Why? It doesn't exist anymore.

"We have built the architecture of our season based on the ad market, not based on the consumer. What I'm saying is look at the spring, look at the summer, look at competing with baseball versus competing with the NFL, create more days, create time for practice, create longer training camps. Create time as your friend, rather than this artificial compression of second-quarter ad dollars being the arbiter for setting up our season."

[WuTang_CMB]

I'm curious as to what the play-in tournament will look like with 22 teams. With 20, it seemed elementary to have 4 groups of 5 teams. With 22 teams It's totally unclear at this point. I think it's important that the play-in tournament renders no significant advantage to any team in terms of the number of games they play in preparation.

I don't think groups were ever an option, the owners voted against that weeks ago. I think they will have a few regular season games, a play in for the 8th seed, and then playoffs.

All points sound like

1) 7-8 regular season games for each team. = 3 weeks
2) Play in tournament for 8, 9 , 10? Seeds .... Berman says its just 8 vs 9 = 1 week
3) Championship Bracket ... either East on one side and West on other or at random = July, September, up to October 12

4) Draft is End of October
5) Free Agency November 1st

6) 20-21 training camp mid December ... season start early January

I think with this being a fked up here, now is the time u do the 1-16 bracket no conferences and see how it is

[Zeno]

please please please please please make the official start of the season in December going forward.

I don’t see how they shift it back again unless they decide to drastically shorten next season. Their desperation in the current situation to preserve revenue makes that extremely unlikely.

BOSTON -- Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin has a plan to increase the NBA's ratings: start and end the season two months later.

Koonin spoke Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston on a panel about possible changes to the league's schedule. The panel was moderated by ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz.

"Relevance equals revenue," Koonin said. "We've got to create the most relevance, and the revenue will fix itself.

Under Koonin's proposal, the start of the NBA season would shift from mid-October to mid-December, after college football has completed its regular season and has begun its bowl season. More important, the shift would allow the NBA to avoid having to compete with the NFL's regular season, as it currently does in the first 2½ months before the "unofficial" start to the league's calendar on Christmas Day.

EDITOR'S PICKS

NBA's best 25 under 25: Ranking future superstars

NBA playoff predictions: Most likely seeds and best matchups
Meanwhile, the NBA Finals would take place sometime in August rather than June, with the draft and free agency to come after that. That would again allow the NBA to dominate more of the summer months, when it is going up against only Major League Baseball, instead of fighting with football for territory.

"A big piece is you don't have to reinvent the wheel to enhance ratings," Koonin said. "Sometimes, moving away from competition is a great way to grow ratings.

"If King Kong is at your door, you might go out the back door, rather than go out the front and engage in a hand-to-hand fight with King Kong. Many times, at the start of the NBA season, we are competing with arguably the best Thursday Night Football game with the NBA on TNT, our marquee broadcast, and we get crushed and we wonder why.

"It's because at the beginning of the season, there's very little relevance for the NBA. The relevance is now. That's when people are talking about it."

Yeah, I remember that. Never has a hypothetical proposal become the plan faster than in this case. What was the likelihood this ever happened without what has happened?

[nabbs]

The season starting in December going forward is a lock in my mind. It’s the only way to increase ratings and ad revenue without making drastic changes to the playing format of the regular season and/or playoffs.

[fbalmeida]

A play in tournament that maintains the traditional East-West conference separation would make for fierce competition among the lower 8-13 Western seeds.

[WuTang_CMB]

I don’t see how they shift it back again unless they decide to drastically shorten next season. Their desperation in the current situation to preserve revenue makes that extremely unlikely.

BOSTON -- Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin has a plan to increase the NBA's ratings: start and end the season two months later.

Koonin spoke Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston on a panel about possible changes to the league's schedule. The panel was moderated by ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz.

"Relevance equals revenue," Koonin said. "We've got to create the most relevance, and the revenue will fix itself.

Under Koonin's proposal, the start of the NBA season would shift from mid-October to mid-December, after college football has completed its regular season and has begun its bowl season. More important, the shift would allow the NBA to avoid having to compete with the NFL's regular season, as it currently does in the first 2½ months before the "unofficial" start to the league's calendar on Christmas Day.

EDITOR'S PICKS

NBA's best 25 under 25: Ranking future superstars

NBA playoff predictions: Most likely seeds and best matchups
Meanwhile, the NBA Finals would take place sometime in August rather than June, with the draft and free agency to come after that. That would again allow the NBA to dominate more of the summer months, when it is going up against only Major League Baseball, instead of fighting with football for territory.

"A big piece is you don't have to reinvent the wheel to enhance ratings," Koonin said. "Sometimes, moving away from competition is a great way to grow ratings.

"If King Kong is at your door, you might go out the back door, rather than go out the front and engage in a hand-to-hand fight with King Kong. Many times, at the start of the NBA season, we are competing with arguably the best Thursday Night Football game with the NBA on TNT, our marquee broadcast, and we get crushed and we wonder why.

"It's because at the beginning of the season, there's very little relevance for the NBA. The relevance is now. That's when people are talking about it."

Yeah, I remember that. Never has a hypothetical proposal become the plan faster than in this case. What was the likelihood this ever happened without what has happened?

I think at the time there were mixed reviews of it .. and then after this they were playing around with proposals of how to reshape the league schedule (mid season tourney, re-seeding final 4, etc)

I can understand it to be a tough decision to drastically change the outlook of the season scheduling but I honestly think this is a great idea without doing that mid-season tourney which the players hated.

If you look at it, the NFL and College football will always be #1. Let them be King for September - Feb 2

The NBA has been a strong #2 in the US for a while now. They should be King in their own months. No overlap with NFL.

Let those two sports rule the United States. Baseball is nose-diving and the NHL is blah.... hardly even gets mentioned on ESPN.

NFL will own September - Feb 2
NBA will own Feb - August
.. overlap of january but who cares its 1 month

Draft end of August.
Free Agency Saturday morning of Labour Day Weekend (much like Canada day long weekend ... i always loved this weekend with nba free agency)

[Danny1616]

If we are looking at a season that officially ends on October 12, and a training camp that begins in the first week of December, then that's not a lot of break in between. Surprised the players would be fine with that, but there doesn't appear to be much choice if they want to crown a champion for this season.

You realize they all are getting 4 months off right? That's a really really long off-season they already had.

Unless you make the conference finals or finals, you are only going to be playing for a month and still get 3+ months off.

Remember last year we won the title middle of June and we were in training camp end of September, that's only about a 3 month break.

[Ackshun]

If we are looking at a season that officially ends on October 12, and a training camp that begins in the first week of December, then that's not a lot of break in between. Surprised the players would be fine with that, but there doesn't appear to be much choice if they want to crown a champion for this season.

You realize they all are getting 4 months off right? That's a really really long off-season they already had.

Unless you make the conference finals or finals, you are only going to be playing for a month and still get 3+ months off.

Remember last year we won the title middle of June and we were in training camp end of September, that's only about a 3 month break.

Four months in a COVID lockdown is not the same as "four months off" . If players were used to visiting family and friends, exploring the world, playing pickup at their local gym, working out with other players etc etc, it's likely none of that occurred this "off" season.

I'm not sure if I'd make the players burn up all their vacation time stuck in COVID lockdown, but then again, everyone is making sacrifices.

[nabbs]

If we are looking at a season that officially ends on October 12, and a training camp that begins in the first week of December, then that's not a lot of break in between. Surprised the players would be fine with that, but there doesn't appear to be much choice if they want to crown a champion for this season.

You realize they all are getting 4 months off right? That's a really really long off-season they already had.

Unless you make the conference finals or finals, you are only going to be playing for a month and still get 3+ months off.

Remember last year we won the title middle of June and we were in training camp end of September, that's only about a 3 month break.

Four months in a COVID lockdown is not the same as "four months off" . If players were used to visiting family and friends, exploring the world, playing pickup at their local gym, working out with other players etc etc, it's likely none of that occurred this "off" season.

I'm not sure if I'd make the players burn up all their vacation time stuck in COVID lockdown, but then again, everyone is making sacrifices.

The main concern with the offseason to is to give players time to rest and rebuild bodies so that you don't have significant injury risks. I posted a timeline of games played and months off in between:

If we chart out the continuation of this season + the entirety of next season (so beginning of 2020 to the end of 2021):

October 22nd 2019 - March 9th 2020 (4.5 months)

4.5 month break

July 31st 2020 - October 12th 2020 (2.5 months)

2.5 month break

December 25th 2020 - August 25th 2021 (8 months)

So in 2 years, you play 15 months of basketball with 7 months off in total. A typical 2 year stretch of basketball is 16 months of playing + 8 months off in total for an offseason

[Danny1616]

If we are looking at a season that officially ends on October 12, and a training camp that begins in the first week of December, then that's not a lot of break in between. Surprised the players would be fine with that, but there doesn't appear to be much choice if they want to crown a champion for this season.

You realize they all are getting 4 months off right? That's a really really long off-season they already had.

Unless you make the conference finals or finals, you are only going to be playing for a month and still get 3+ months off.

Remember last year we won the title middle of June and we were in training camp end of September, that's only about a 3 month break.

Four months in a COVID lockdown is not the same as "four months off" . If players were used to visiting family and friends, exploring the world, playing pickup at their local gym, working out with other players etc etc, it's likely none of that occurred this "off" season.

I'm not sure if I'd make the players burn up all their vacation time stuck in COVID lockdown, but then again, everyone is making sacrifices.

These are multi-millionaire athletes that work for an organization.

Everybody is stuck without vacation, people have been laid off work, people are struggling to pay their bills and mortgages etc. Also many of these players were still able to have access to very private and exclusive workout/basketball facilities or had their own personal gyms and basketball courts.

At the end of the day the players were able to spend time with their immediate families and rest their bodies for four months. I don't think any NBA player is going to complain about playing in August and September and then starting the season again December.

[nabbs]

Read on Twitter

?s=21

The play-in tournament would work as follows, according to sources: If the ninth seed is more than four games behind the eighth seed, the eighth seed earns the playoff spot; if the ninth seed is four or fewer games behind, then the eighth and ninth seed will enter a play-in tournament that is double-elimination for the eighth seed and single-elimination for ninth. ESPN first reported the league was working on 22-team models.

Lmao at this quote

The 30-team model, meanwhile, brings several bottom-feeding teams that do not belong in the bubble environment given the NBA’s medical safety and health priority.

Among several other medical protocols expected to be proposed in the coming days, according to sources:

— Players unable to shower in the arena, would need to do so in their respective hotels
— Bench players would sit in spread-out rows, inactive players would sit in the stands
— No guests until the playoffs

[nabbs]

Read on Twitter

?s=20

[nabbs]

Read on Twitter

?s=21