The NBA and its Players’ Association can’t seem to agree on a start date for the 2020-21 season.
The players, especially those who made a deep run in the playoffs which just concluded in October, feel that beginning the season in December with a shortened 72-game season, as the league has proposed, is too quick of a turnaround.
Instead, they’re pushing for the schedule to start closer to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but the NBA fears starting the season in mid-January could result in a loss of $1 billion in revenue.
The league recently pushed back its deadline (for a fourth time) to serve notice on terminating the Collective Bargaining Agreement to Nov. 6 to allow more time for negotiations between the NBA and NBPA.
But in a call Monday with the league’s general managers, NBA commissioner Adam Silver expressed urgency in the need to come to an agreement for a pre-Christmas start according to a report by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
“NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the top team basketball executives that ‘time is running out’ on the possibility of starting the 2020-21 season prior to Christmas Day and potentially salvaging hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue,” Wojnarowski reported.
Discussions between the NBA and its union continued all weekend and into Monday. And while optimism reportedly still exists that an agreement on a pre-Christmas start can be reached, the clock is ticking.
