By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and the League Office have been pushing for a pre-Christmas start to the 2020-21 NBA season, while the NBPA has eyed Martin Luther King Day (January 18) as the possible start date.
According to reports by ESPN, 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”, during a conference call with the league’s GMs this past Monday.
Talks with the NBPA resumed over the weekend and Monday, but the union’s inability to consent to the start of Dec. 22 and the shortened 72-game regular season left the league “fearful”, per the report, just a few days before the opening of training camps around Dec. 1 for the pre-Christmas tip is no longer a reasonable prospect.
“Optimism still exists that an agreement can be reached on the pre-Christmas start, but it has been tempered in recent days,” per ESPN.
The NBA could suffer a significant revenue loss, between $500 million and $1 billion if the plan to start the season in December fails, as previously reported.