The OtherArena

[Steve Yohe]

Philadelphia as a team seems to have character problems. Can't see them be the team coming out of the East. So Milwaukee, Boston & Toronto. I like watching Boston & would love to beat them in the finals...again.

We would be looking good, it we got a win against Mil.--Yohe

[corrado]

And the last roster spot goes to Dion Waiters. So no Jr Smith reunion with Bron. Maybe a positive.

[jdw]

Barf.

[jdw]

That was good. :)

Would have preferred that they put their foot on their throats... but (i) the Buck are hard to hold down, and (ii) we don't really have the bench/supporting case to sustain that against a team like the Bucks.

Would be an interesting 7 game series watching how the teams adjust.

[corrado]

Well can't get it any better than these past two games. Against the other two best teams in the league. They're the favorite now to win it all.

And maybe they got the right Morris twin after all.

[JAG]

LeBron with a reminder of what Playoff LeBron looks like.

MVP Maximus.

Could be 1 back of Milwaukee for Finals HCA by tomorrow night.

Narrative is catching up with the reality of these Lakers.

LeBron and AD?

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.

Jagdip

[jdw]

Yep... really good game. :)

[corrado]

bucks lost to Denver. Granted, Giannis was out like he has been the past couple of games. Still, not a good sign for a team that at one point was being compared to that record breaking Warriors team from a few years ago,

[jdw]

One loss back in the Loss column.

Don't exactly want to see us go nuts running people into the ground to finish ahead of the Bucks. But it would be nice if they fall off for a few weeks.

[jdw]

Pretty shitty loss. This is a team we should have rolled at home. Maybe it's okay in having us give up the chase of the Bucks, barring a total collapse on their part.

[Steve Yohe]

So the big season is over! Poor LeBron. Davis is back to being a free agent. Will the NBA & the Lakers be bankrupted? --- Yohe

[jdw]

They aren't cancelling the season. It's just suspended. They will move heaven and earth to, at the very least, have some form of playoffs. Even if the playoffs don't start until July-August. They can always shorten the next season and start it later. It's happened twice before due to lockouts:

1998/99 - 50 games (started Feb 5)
2011/12 - 66 games (started Dec 25)


Run a post season in Jun-Aug. Take an off season. Open camps in late Nov / early Dec. Start the season on Christmas.

If they don't have time to play another 6 regular season games, the NBA would be okay with how the current standings are. Sure, they would prefer to have the Pelicans or Blazers play the Lakers in the first round rather than the Grizzzzzzz. But they can live with this starting in Jun:

East
Bucks (1) vs Orlando (8)
Heat (4) vs Pacers (5)
Celtics (3) vs 76ers (6)
Toronto (2) vs Nets (7)


West
Lakers (1) vs Grizzzzz (8)
Jazz (4) vs OKC (5)
Denver (3) vs Rockets (6)
Clippers (2) vs Mavs (7)


John

[Steve Yohe]

I'm just glad your sure about that.--Yohe

[jdw]

I'm sure that at the moment they haven't cancelled the season because they've very specifically said they are suspending it, and will re-evaluate where they are in the future. If the owners were tossing in the towel, they would use the word cancelled for the season. That's all.

In turn, I'm also sure of the following things:

* they started the 1998/99 season on Feb 5 and played a 50 game plus a normal post season

* they started the 2011/12 on Dec 25 and played a 66 game season plus a full playoff

That means the NBA has past experience, one of them very recently, of playing shortened seasons. They know how to make it work.

I will note one major difference between "then" and "now": we are in an era of Load Management and Minimizing Back-to-Back games. It's not supper likely that they will match the schedules of the 1998/99 or 2011/2012 seasons where a lot of games were crammed into a short period. On the other hand, the League Office has already been looking at future schedules for starting seasons later to get more games away from the NFL and NCAA Football. This knowledge will let come up with good plans on the schedule for the 2020/2021 season (i.e. Next Season) if it starts late.

So the NBA can pencil in Dec 25 as a potential start date for the 2020/21 season. They then can work backwards from there to figure out:

* Training Camp & Pre-Season schedule

Media Days was Sep 27 this year, with Training Camp opening up on Sep 28. Pre-season this year was 6 games from Oct 5 to Oct 18, with the regular season starting on Oct 22. If you match that number of days exactly, it comes to this adjustment:

Sep 27 --> Nov 30 Media Day
Sep 28 --> Dec 1 Training Camp Opens
Oct 5 --> Dec 8 Pre-Season Starts
Oct 18 --> Dec 21 Pre-Season Ends
Oct 22 --> Dec 25 Opening Day

* End of Finals & Draft Day & Start of Free Agency

We can look at it two ways:

This past season, the Draft (06/20/19) was 4 days after Game 7 of the Finals (schedule for 06/16/19 but not needed). Free Agency (06/30/19) started 10 days after that. This is already very tight period.

Going backwards, there was an 90 day gap from the Start of Free Agency to Opening of Training Camp. Basically 3 months.

If we speculate 11/30/20 is Media Day, going backwards from there is:

08/19/20 Game 7 of Finals
08/23/20 Draft
09/02/20 Free Agency Starts

But let's remember - the 90 days between the Start of Free Agency and the Opening of Training Camp is largely artificial rather than totally needed. It is a positive to give players time off, but you could shave it some. In fact, Lebron scheduled workout with Lakers players before training camp opened.

So lets look at the real date that the NBA would want to avoid:

Thursday September 10, 2020 = Opening Night of the NFL

The NBA would want the Finals to end before that.

This isn't complicated - rather than a drop dead date of 08/19/20 for Game 7 of the Finals, the real one would be Sunday September 6. That would lead to:

09/06/20 Game 7 of Finals
09/10/20 Draft
09/20/20 Free Agency Starts

Okay... right there... you can't do the Draft on 9/10/20 because the NFL opens on that day. This isn't complicated - move it to Wed, one day earlier.

09/06/20 Game 7 of Finals
09/09/20 Draft
09/20/20 Free Agency Starts

* Start of Post Season

Last year the playoff schedule was this:

04/13/19 Playoffs Start
06/16/19 Game 7 of Finals

You could shorten that as the playoffs have a fair number of extra days off. They also could turn Round 1 into 5 game series rather than 7 game series. But even if you don't you get this:

07/04/20 Start of the playoffs
09/06/20 Game 7 of Finals

Which ties into my earlier post - run a post season in Jul-Aug. To do that, the players need about 2 weeks of practice. My guess is that they will be working out on their own to try to stay in shape.

It's March 12 now. Jun 15 is 95 days away.

My guess is that within 45 days they will have a much better handle on whether they have a chance of getting the players back together no later than say mid-Jun and can salvage a post season. I think they would be willing to toss the rest of the regular season as long as they can start the post season in early-to-mid July. There is a ton of money on the line for the post season.

Whether the country will be in good enough / safe enough shape to conduct a post season in Jul-Aug... who knows. I'm not going to speculate on that. I suspect over the next month we will see how other countries that were ahead of the US in the timeline have made progress.

I only know that the NBA will try to have a post season if they can. That includes adjusting the post season timeline, the off season schedule and the start of the next season. If they can.

[corrado]

I would assume that I don't think we'll be seeing nba involvement in the Olympics this year, if there is an Olympics. I can't see Bron types having a little rest before gearing up for the Olympics.

If the schedule were to be altered, and games were to be played during the summer, then there would be no summer league etc. Which is a bit of a dress rehearsal for the 1st/2nd year players.

I do like the idea that's floating, of yeah the season starting on Christmas from now on. You don't get the first few weeks of the NBA season competing with the NFL. And the NFL doesn't have much presence, if any on Christmas Day. And perhaps shorten the season. a tad, but not do any one of those silly midseason tourneys.