The NBA seems as if it will most likely to stick with its traditional calendar of October-June after the 2020-21 season, according to Brian Windhorst of ESPN.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, there had been talk of changing the regular season start date to perhaps sometime in December or January and stretching the playoffs into July.
That talk surfaced again after the pandemic, with NBA insiders suggesting the league could use its restart as sort of a trial run for a permanent shift in the calendar.
But all that talk appears to have been just that — talk.
The idea behind all this basically would be to avoid head-to-head competition with the NFL as much as possible. The NBA is learning what most other forms of entertainment already knew — there is no match for pro football.
So it seems that once the NBA gets through next season (perhaps a January-late July proposition), it will return its sights on the normal October-June run, if possible.
“I think we’re learning a little bit more about our television audience as we are experimenting,” commissioner Adam Silver said recently. “And part of it is fewer people are watching television in the summer, different competition, especially when you get into the fall with the NFL, college football and all that. So that’s all into the mix, as well.”
