With the potential cancellation of this year’s NBA season, which has already been pushed back, Adam Silver and his government should look into possibly shortening the following season.
In a recent interview, Shaquille O’Neal said, “I think we should scrap the season. Everybody go home, get healthy, come back next year. Just scrap the season. Just scrap it. To try and come back now and do a rush playoffs as a player? Any team that wins this year, there’s an asterisk. They’re not going to get the respect. What if a team that’s not really in the mix of things all of a sudden wins with a new playoff format? Nobody is going to respect that. So, scrap it. Worry about the safety of the fans and the people. Come back next year.”
With that in mind, the league has yet to acknowledge those comments. However, whatever the decision Adam Silver makes is seemingly not going to occur anytime soon. As Silver has mentioned, the league will not rush things back into place. The decision will not be made this month and possibly not even in the early parts of June.
But what if the league does not decide on a plan of action until late June or later? The chances of the season having a complete playoff are seemingly fictional. If the league does decide to reopen and finish the season with certain tweaks to the format, what will happen with the following 2020-2021 season? Players would not want to finish a season in late August or early September just to return two months later. Plus, free agency, the draft, and camps would all need to occur before the next season.
This season will look as though it had been in a CBA lockout. As the season will start up in either late December or early January, this allows the NBA to still have a majority of the season played. This would allow the league to have a two-and-a-half-month break in between the possible playoff format and the next season.
If the season ends in August, the NBA should hold free agency and the draft in the month of September. Then, the league should open camps for teams in late November, allowing players to have time to recover and get healthy during a realistic off-season timetable.
Not only does this idea help with getting a reasonable timetable for players and organizations to have a normal off-season but it should also help the NBA to re-establish their regular season schedule. Having a shortened 2020-2021 season would allow the NBA to finish their season by the end of May or early June. This would shift the off-season back, pitting the draft at the end of June and free agency in July, as usual.
The 2020-2021 season has yet to be discussed to the public eye as the league is focusing on this current season. But with COVID-19 still around and possibilities of it coming back this winter, the NBA could see new changes for the following season.
