NBA Will Return to Round Out 2020 Season- In Disney World
By George Robbins
Ever since the announcement that all sporting events would be cancelled indefinitely following the worldwide announcement of the coronavirus pandemic, people have wanted to know when they would begin again. Back in March many different businesses, including all major professional sports leagues, had to start shutting down and the first one to do so was the NBA. Ever since they closed down all functions, people have been wondering whether they would be returning at all this year to finish the season or if they would forego it entirely. With this idea of how to move forward in mind, the NBA has been working on a strategy to deal with this and finish out the season.
One of the most prolific ideas to come forward within the past couple of weeks has been to use ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney world as a hub of operations. This idea is one that would see the complex become the hub that would allow the season to keep going so that it wouldn’t ruin the post-season or anything to follow. Due to Disney’s large amount of hotel accommodations and the number of available basketball courts, this just seemed to be the best possible answer to the problem at hand for the league. The biggest question that has actually just been answered was how the season would be formatted should the idea go through and the season can start again.
In order to get the league up and going again, a season format had to be established in order to make sure things can run smoothly moving forward. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s proposed plan will be decided upon by the Board of Governors meeting, but it will likely be implemented due to how smoothly it should be able to be implemented. The plans calls for 22 of the 30 teams to go to Orlando and they will each play eight regular season games. Then, there will be a play-in tournament to determine the last playoff seeds in the Eastern and Western conferences before the playoffs. The start date for these games would be July 31st with the last possible date for Game 7 of the Finals being October 12th.
His plan eliminates the teams that were far out from playoff contention when the season was forced to shut down back in March. It also gives teams that were vying for playoff contention a chance to be able to qualify for the post-season. Teams that were within six games of their conference’s eighth seed are part of the plan. Silver’s plan will allow teams that were already in playoff contention the opportunity to get themselves back on track and allow them to practice before the playoff games start up. Players on the grounds will have to pay very close attention to guidelines if they want to leave the area and must maintain the same social distancing they should have been otherwise. The prevention of the spread of the virus is still a major issue and it is the reason no fans will be in attendance during the games. So it will be interesting to see how this all really ends up happening.