The NBA took another step towards a return-to-play.
The NBA has told the National Basketball Players Association that it will present a 22-team plan for restarting the season to the league’s board of governors on Thursday, according to reports.
Here are details of the proposal, via The Associated Press:
- 22 teams would come to the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex on the Disney campus near Orlando, Florida.
- The teams would play eight games to determine playoff seeding before the postseason begins.
- The Western Conference would have 13 teams going to Disney, and the Eastern Conference would have nine.
- Memphis, Portland, New Orleans, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Phoenix would still have a mathematical chance of earning a spot in a play-in series. Memphis is currently the 8th seed in the west.
- In the East, Brooklyn is currently the 7th seed and Orlando is the 8th seed. Washington is six games behind Brooklyn and 5-1/2 games behind Orlando in the standings. Washington would have to close within four games of Orlando or Brooklyn to trigger a play-in series on that side of the bracket.
For an NBA play-in series to happen to determine the No. 8 seed on either playoff bracket, the ninth-place team would have to be within four games of eighth place once the eight-game schedule of lead-in games is completed.
If a play-in series occurs, it would basically be a best-of-two – where the No. 9 seed would have to win two head-to-head matchups to take over the No. 8 spot.
They’re still additional hurdles to clear, via negotiation, with some elements of the restart plan. This includes how much of a percentage of their contracts that players will lose because some regular season games were canceled.
The person who spoke to The Associated Press was on condition of anonymity because the league has not released its proposal publicly.
The NBA suspended its season on March 11 “until further notice” after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz became the first player in the league to test positive for the coronavirus. The league, at the time, was leaning toward playing games without fans in the arenas.
