There remains a number of questions regarding the 2020-21 NBA season and when that will begin, but before that can happen, the league must figure out their offseason schedule. The league and NBPA, led by executive director Michele Roberts, must work extremely closely in order to figure out the best way to move forward with next season.
The biggest question marks still hanging in the air is the salary cap and free agency. The salary cap is a percentage of the NBA’s revenue which were way down this past season for obvious reasons.
Figuring out the best way to calculate that for the 2020-21 campaign so that teams are still able to sign free agents, is of the utmost importance. This is especially important to those players who are free agents this offseason hoping to cash in.
Roberts spoke to Mark Medina of USA Today, saying that the players themselves are anxious, but they must do things correctly:
“We have free agents that are losing their minds, as are teams that want to engage and negotiate. So that’s something we don’t have the luxury of delaying a decision on,” Roberts said. “As tough as this is, it’s not life or death. We want to do it right and not do it quickly if it sacrifices doing it right. In my view, we take as long as we need to take. But we can all agree we don’t want to drag this on unnecessarily. The players are probably the most anxious stakeholders in this business to get this done.”
The NBA is a business and the players who are due to get big money contracts have every reason to be anxious about how this works out. The cap will be lower, but exactly how much is unknown as is the period in which they’ll be able to negotiate with teams.
The NBA Draft will take place on November 18 and with a target start date for the actual season just over a month later, that doesn’t leave much time for free agency to take place. Teams are reportedly preparing for a start to free agency just a week after the draft, but in the end Roberts is right in that they can’t rush this process at the risk of mistakes that could hurt the league and players down the line.
NBA Rumors: training camps for 2020-21 season to begin early December
With the NBA targeting a late December start date for the 2020-21 season, it doesn’t leave much time for training camps to get started which is why the league is reportedly looking at December 1 as the first day of training camps for teams.
This will possibly be unlike any other training camp as that is just two weeks after the draft leaving very little time for free agency to take place. With this potential start date, it sounds as if training camp and free agency could be happening simultaneously.
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