NBA: Biggest winners of resuming season and revamped playoff format
The 2019-20 NBA season will resume at the end of July. Here’s a look at the teams that will benefit under the new playoff format.
The 2019-20 NBA season was suspended definitely back in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Fortunately, for basketball fans, the NBA’s board of governors and the players’ union both agreed on a plan to resume the season.
Under the new format, 22 teams will travel to Disney World to play eight games inside the Walt Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex. This list of participants will include 13 teams from the Western Conference and nine teams from the Eastern Conference.
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The first games will be played on or around July 31st. Should the NBA Finals require seven games to crown the next NBA champion, that series finale will be played on Oct. 12.
Training camps for the 2020-21 NBA season will tentatively commence on Nov. 10, with the starting date being slated for Dec. 1. For obvious reasons, this is not an ideal scenario for multiple reasons.
First, all of the teams will have been off for more than four months once play resumes at the end of July. Second, the quick turnaround for the two teams that will be duking it out in the NBA Finals will have just a little over a month until the start of the next season.
The news is not all bad, though, and with that sentiment in mind, here’s a look at some of the biggest winners (aside from the NBA of course) that will benefit from restarting the season as well as the new playoff format as well.