The NBA has approved a plan to restart the 2019-2020 season, which was suspended during the coronavirus pandemic.
Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium, as well as Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, reported for the first time that the league’s board of governors approved a restart plan on Thursday that involves holding the remaining matches at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida.
Twenty-two teams will take part in the conclusion of the 2019-20 season. They include the 16 franchises in the playoff position at the time of the NBA’s suspension on March 11 and the six teams in six games in a playoff.
Those six consist of Washington Wizards, Portland Trail Blazer, New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings and San Antonio Spurs.
The teams will play eight regular season games each before a possible play-in tournament for the eighth seed in each conference. The league will then hold its typical four-round playoff consisting of best-of-seven series.
The last possible date for the conclusion of the NBA season will be Monday 12 October, when a hypothetical game 7 of the NBA finals is scheduled, according to Wojnarowski.
Players will undergo uniform daily tests while in Orlando. A positive test for a single player would result in that person entering quarantine and receiving treatment. The games would continue however.
The league stopped playing on March 11 after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. That discovery led to the cancellation of the Utah road game with the Oklahoma City Thunder that evening and soon resulted in the association’s suspension.
Sports organizations therefore canceled or postponed the seasons en masse over the following two days, including all five major European football leagues, NHL and MLS. MLB delayed the start of its season and the NCAA canceled its winter and spring championships.
Some sports have or will be making their comebacks, however, with UFC and NASCAR back in action and the PGA Tour set to do so on June 11th.
Now even the NBA is ready to resume the game.