By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
The 2020-2021 NBA season will most likely begin after the new year begins and the plan, according to commissioner Adam Silver is to have the normal schedule 82 games in the regular season. This will have an immediate effect on the national teams that are featuring NBA players ahead of the 2021 Olympic Games.
“There are a lot of great U.S. players, and we may be up against a scenario where the top 15 NBA players aren’t competing in the Olympics, but other great American players are competing,” Silver said to CNN, per the Associated Press. “And, obviously, there are many NBA players who participate in the Olympics for other countries. That’s something we’re going to have to work through.”
If the upcoming season will have 82 games, then it shall be concluded around June or July, during a period when the Olympic Qualifiers are planned to be held. Many national teams of well-known NBA players are participating in the qualification games, including Canada, Serbia, Greece, Slovenia, Lithuania, Croatia and Turkey.
Thus it will be impossible for such players as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, or Domantas Sabonis to join their national teams in the Qualifiers. And if their NBA squads make it far in the playoffs, they will most likely be unable to be in Tokyo.
“These are highly unique and unusual circumstances,” Silver said. “And I think just as it is for the Olympic movement, it is for us as well. And we’re just going to have to sort of find a way to meld and mesh those two competing considerations.”
Photo: FIBA