By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
As ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported, the National Basketball Players Association has been preparing and expecting that free agency will not start in October. That also means that the start of the 2020-21 season in December is highly doubtful.
According to the report, there are union meetings in Orlando with all the big names, including union president Chris Paul and megastars like LeBron James, as all are residing under the same roof. And the delay seems more than possible: “Because of the uncertainty about next season’s projected league revenues, a delay to the Oct. 18 start of free agency would give the NBA and NBPA a chance to better formulate the parameters of the 2020-21 salary-cap and luxury-tax thresholds.
The hope is that, the longer the league waits on every decision and projection, the latest information on the coronavirus pandemic can offer a better understanding of whether there is a possibility of playing games in 2020-21 with fans in arenas, which is vital to the league’s financial health. Commissioner Adam Silver told the players in a conference call in May that game-night receipts account for 40% of NBA revenues”.
That’s bad news not only for the NBA but also for FIBA basketball. There are notable players in Europe who despite the late start of the free agency were planning on moving to the NBA and their situation will get even more complex, with the season in Europe expected to start in October. Also, if the NBA season starts in January 2021 or February 2021 there’s a good chance that the marquee NBA players will miss at least the pre-Olympic tournaments with their national teams due to scheduling conflicts.
However, for the NBA the issue is much more practical and money related, since according to the report: “Front-office executives are privately concerned about the lack of salary-cap and luxury-tax projections in place before the Oct. 16 draft. Those projections would allow them to make crucial decisions — including on possible trades — with a clearer understanding of the financial ramifications. Among many teams, there is interest in connecting the mid-October draft and free-agency periods so that they could be delayed together”.