The NBA announced today that NBA Draft 2021 presented by State Farm® will take place on Thursday, July 29, beginning at 8 p.m. ET. The first round will be televised by ESPN and ABC, and the second round will air on ESPN.
NBA Rumor: NBA Schedule
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Subject to evolving public health conditions, Microsoft Surface NBA Draft Combine 2021 is scheduled to take place Monday, June 21 through Sunday, June 27. ESPN networks plan to televise the NBA Draft Combine, with coverage featuring five-on-five games and strength and agility testing.
NBA Draft Lottery 2021 presented by State Farm® will take place on Tuesday, June 22, airing on ESPN at 8:30 p.m. ET.
The deadline for an early entry player to apply for this year’s NBA Draft is Sunday, May 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET. The deadline for an early entry player to withdraw from the NBA Draft is Monday, July 19 at 5 p.m. ET.
League sets schedule for 2021 NBA Draft
Shams Charania: The 2021 NBA Draft will be on July 29, sources tell @TheAthletic @Stadium. NBA Draft Lottery will be on June 22. Draft Combine scheduled for June 21-27.
Adam Silver: We're not considering a playoff bubble
Fred Katz: Adam Silver on the possibilities of a playoff bubble: “We’re not considering going back to a bubble right now. I don’t rule anything out…The virus is firmly in charge, so we need to adjust to circumstances as they present themselves.”
Tim Bontemps: Adam Silver says the first half of the season went “as expected.” Said the league expected games to be lost, and that the league’s protocols have held up.
Adam Silver expecting league to have a normal schedule next season
Joe Vardon: NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the plan remains for league to get back to as close to a ‘normal’ schedule as possible next season. Typically a season starts in October and ends in June.
Chase Hughes: Scott Brooks says he likes how the NBA is having back-to-back games against the same teams this season. Seems like he wouldn’t mind if it was kept in future years. “It gives you a playoff feel.”
Tom Orsborn: Poeltl on the jam-packed 2nd half sked: “Just means we need to be on top of things (rest & recovery). We are aware it is not going to be easy, but we are not going to use it as an excuse. It is what it is. A lot of teams have to deal with the same type of stuff.”
Although the NBA’s goal is to have every team play its scheduled 72 games, sources said the league is cognizant of the fact that all 30 teams might not be able to reach that number. There is limited flexibility within the schedule to add games, or to add dates on the calendar, as the NBA wants to get the playoffs completed on time before the scheduled start of the Olympic Games in late July.
NBA releases schedule for the second half of the season
The NBA today released its game schedule and broadcast schedules for TNT, ESPN, ABC, NBA TV and ESPN Radio for the Second Half of the 2020-21 regular season, which will begin Wednesday, March 10 and conclude Sunday, May 16. The Second Half of the regular season will be followed by the 2021 NBA Play-In Tournament (May 18-21) and the 2021 NBA Playoffs, which will tip off Saturday, May 22. The Play-In Tournament will determine the teams that will fill the seventh and eighth playoff seeds in each conference. The teams with the seventh-highest through the tenth-highest winning percentages in each conference will qualify for the Play-In Tournament.
The game schedules across TNT and ESPN for the final week of the regular season (May 10-16) will be determined at a later date in order to provide the most compelling matchups to a national audience leading into the NBA Play-In Tournament and the NBA Playoffs. In the final week of the regular season, TNT will present doubleheaders Tuesday, May 11 and Thursday, May 13, and ESPN will televise doubleheaders Wednesday, May 12 and Friday, May 14. ESPN will also air a game Sunday, May 16 on the final day of the regular season. TNT will tip off its coverage of the Second Half of the season Thursday, March 11 with a doubleheader as the Brooklyn Nets host the Boston Celtics (7:30 p.m. ET) and the Golden State Warriors visit the LA Clippers (10 p.m. ET). ESPN will begin its Second Half coverage Sunday, March 14 when the New Orleans Pelicans host the Clippers (9 p.m. ET). On Monday, March 15, ESPN’s first doubleheader in the Second Half will feature the New York Knicks visiting the Nets (8 p.m. ET) and the Lakers taking on the Warriors in San Francisco (10:30 p.m. ET).
Barry Jackson: Per source, Lakers-at-Heat will be April 8, a Thursday, on TNT. .. Heat’s other TNT game in second half of season is home against Portland on March 25, also a Thursday. Schedule being announced this afternoon.
Ohm Youngmisuk: The Clippers will have 7 back-to-backs in the upcoming second half portion of the schedule. They have one stretch where they play nine straight home games. And they finish the season with a four-game road swing in six days at Toronto, Charlotte, Houston and OKC.
Pistons-Knicks game added to first half season schedule
Tim Reynolds: The National Basketball Association announced today that it will schedule the Detroit Pistons to play the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, March 4 at 7:30 p.m. ET. The Pistons-Knicks game was originally targeted for the second half of the season.
NBA working on adding Pistons-Bulls to schedule on Wednesday
Cavaliers-Nuggets game added to schedule on Friday
Second half of NBA schedule expected to come out in coming days
JD Shaw: The NBA has announced a series of schedule changes. Full details here:
JD Shaw: The NBA has re-scheduled two games: pic.twitter.com/IPORA7AyM8
Tim Bontemps: Tom Thibodeau says he hopes that the two-game series are “here to stay.” Says he thinks most of the people in the league like it, also.
Kellan Olson: The Suns’ postponed game on Jan. 15 against the Warriors will now take place on March 4. That is 2 day after the Suns’ previously scheduled last game of the first half against the Lakers on March 2. All-Star break starts March 5. Suns were gonna break early but not anymore.
JD Shaw: Scheduling updates from the NBA:
In an effort to combat the piling up of games due to postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA on Wednesday said it will adjust the existing schedule to avoid having to fill in too many games during the second half of the season. To do so, the NBA will do two things: reschedule games that have already been postponed, where possible, between now and the league’s scheduled midseason break in early March; and reschedule games to the second half of the season — which has yet to be announced — in order to squeeze in more games where possible in the first half.
Washington’s second-half schedule might not be as jam-packed as first thought, after the NBA said Wednesday it was rescheduling some Wizards games after a half-dozen of their contests were postponed in recent weeks for virus-related reasons. Portland will now visit Washington on Tuesday, a game that was originally set for the second half. Washington will play at Charlotte on Feb. 7, a game that was rescheduled from Jan. 20. And that means the Blazers, who were scheduled to visit the Hornets that day, will now go to Charlotte in the second half of the schedule.
Shams Charania: NBA will reschedule certain postponed games in first half of the season — instead of the second half. Changes: – Blazers-Wizards: Feb. 2, (previously second half) – Wizards-Hornets: Feb. 7 (previously Jan. 20) – Blazers-Hornets Feb. 7: postponed to second half
JD Shaw: Some scheduling updates from the NBA: pic.twitter.com/BCIURtsLRG
NBA announces changes to NBA schedule
Marc J. Spears: Several changes to the NBA schedule: pic.twitter.com/MVCl44hyUz
NBA doesn't plan to unveil second half of season schedule until weeks before end of first half of games
A day after Golden State played its second of two straight games against Portland, Kerr said, “I don’t think fans want to see the same team back-to-back. I think they’d rather see them a few months apart. Teams change. Seeing us now compared to three months from now is totally different. That’s part of the fun part of being a fan. You get to see a team evolve.”
“If I were a fan and I came to the game against Portland that first night, I’d probably want to see somebody else the next night,” Kerr said. “I think we should always be thinking about our fans when it comes to how we schedule the games.”
In the not so distant past, fallible humans came up with the schedule for our sports leagues. It was a painstaking, manual process. In the NFL, the late Val Pinchbeck would slowly piece together the entire football slate on a giant pegboard. Other leagues had too many games to fit on a pegboard, but they employed similarly artisanal methods of mapping the future. Matt Winick was the NBA’s Val Pinchbeck, the man who slowly, personally constructed the 1,230 game schedule within a tornado of yellow legal pads. He did it for three decades, and in his latter years on the job, used the trappings of modernity as a means to shift blame. As Winick told Howard Beck in a 2015 Bleacher Report story: “I tell the teams, ‘Hey, that’s the way the computer did it. But it was never the computer. I was the computer.”
Both Winick and Pinchbeck now are beloved in sports league circles, even if teams were cursing their choices back then. These two are associated with a wilder, woolier, pre-corporate time when the future was more an act of invention than the manifestation of automated fatalism. Such a time cannot be sustained, though. These days, if Winick were still on the job, that computer excuse wouldn’t be a lie.
Efficiency is sought as you hit the big time. TV partners are paying out expensive contracts, like that $2.66 billion the NBA gets annually from ESPN and TNT. Nothing can be left to chance, so everything can’t be left to one man. As one NFL executive once told the Los Angeles Times, “In the 10 years that I’ve been doing this, the computer sophistication has grown exponentially. So now we have not only the ability but the mandate to take all these considerations in parallel.” The same article says of the recent changes, “There has been a significant paradigm shift since those days when the schedule was built, and then games were distributed to the networks. Now, TV is a consideration from the start, and there are several marquee games that are essentials around which the schedule is constructed.”
Indeed, the power of national television in the NBA ecosystem is such that the league has rushed back for an opening night in December despite having just ended its season in mid October — an extreme maneuver even if justified. The NBA set a sports record for shortest ever offseason against the protestations of LeBron James because a) Sacrificing Christmas Day games can’t happen and b) They never want to repeat the experience of losing playoff viewership to the NFL ever again.
The NBA’s fancy proprietary software, called “Game Scheduling System” or “the computer” more colloquially, drew up the lion’s share of this national TV schedule. In 2015, GSS officially took over for Matt Winick. These days, Head of NBA Basketball Strategy & Analytics Evan Wasch is the man with authority over the machine. Wasch, who’s increasingly gained a reputation as the league’s big ideas guy, is of a new generation. He’s a data driven former Sloan Conference presenter who helped introduce the All-Star Game Elam Ending.
Kyle Goon: A game that really sticks out to me is the Lakers at Philadelphia on Jan. 27, a year and a day since Kobe Bryant died, which will be on ESPN. The Lakers last game before he died was also in Philly against the Sixers, and I expect it will be an emotional night.
Each team will play 72 games in the 2020-21 season, facing each opponent in its conference three times (42 total games per team) and each opponent in the other conference twice (30 total games per team). In the First Half, each team will play 37 or 38 games, including a minimum of 17 home games and a maximum of 20. Nearly 52% of all regular-season games (558 of 1,080) have been scheduled for the First Half.
The schedule incorporates steps to reduce travel, including the use of a “series” model. In some instances where a team is scheduled to play twice in one market, those games have been scheduled to be played consecutively. Each team will play an average of four “series” in the First Half – two at home and two on the road. Additional steps include more instances of teams playing consecutive road games against teams that are geographically close, and roughly 50% fewer instances of teams making single-game road trips.
Shams Charania: Notable NBA season matchups: Bucks-Lakers in Milwaukee on Jan. 21 Lakers-Nets in LA on Feb. 18 Lakers-Heat in LA on Feb. 20 Nets-Clippers in LA on Feb. 21
Tim Reynolds: It’s NBA schedule time. The biggest change (besides it being 72 games instead of 82): Some teams will go to a city and play there twice before moving on. Story to come. Let me read this first.
Shams Charania: Sources: NBA’s Jan. 18 Martin Luther King Jr. Day schedule on TNT: Suns-Grizzlies in Memphis Bucks-Nets in Brooklyn Lakers-Warriors in LA 10-game schedule on MLK Day.
KC Johnson: Bulls official schedule out soon. An initial draft had Steph Curry and the Warriors here in season’s first week after they open season in Brooklyn, per source.
Anthony Slater: The Warriors don’t open at home until Jan. 1 against the Blazers, I’m told. They’ll face the Blazers again in the Chase Center two days later, on Jan. 3. Every team will have repetitive matchups this season. Part of the necessary scheduling oddities.
Shams Charania: Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets will visit the Golden State Warriors on Feb. 13 in a primetime Saturday night game, marking Durant’s return to the Bay, sources tell me and @Anthony Slater.
Stefan Bondy: The Knicks are scheduled to host Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and the Nets on Jan. 13, according to a source. Russell Westbrook, now on the Wizards, is scheduled to play his old teammate Kevin Durant on Jan. 3, according to a source.
Fred Katz: SCHEDULE NEWS: John Wall’s return to DC as a member of the Rockets is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 15, according to a source. Russell Westbrook’s return to Houston scheduled tentatively for Jan. 26. The illustrious @Chase Hughes first with the news.
Stefan Bondy: The Knicks are opening their season Dec. 23 at the Indiana Pacers, according to a source.
NBA announces schedule to be released Friday
Ira Winderman: NBA announces schedule will be released Friday.
Anthony Slater: Christmas in Milwaukee would signal the Warriors are starting the season on an extended east road swing. That’s the initial expectation within the franchise.
Adrian Wojnarowski: ESPN Sources: Tentative Christmas Day Schedule
NBA releases full preseasons schedule
Shams Charania: NBA Preseason begins on Dec. 11, running through Dec. 19: Lakers-Clippers, New York-Detroit, Orlando-Atlanta, Houston-Chicago, Sacramento-Portland.
Shams Charania: Full NBA Preseason schedule:
Kellan Olson: NBA announced the structure and format to the upcoming season, including the play-in tournament with the 7-10 seeds being official. Suns will have 3 games against each team in the West (42 games) and 2 games against each team in the East (30 games).
Fred Katz: NBA announces dates for the upcoming season: • Dec. 11-19: Preseason • Dec. 22-March 4: First Half of reg season • March 5-10: All-Star break • March 11-16: Second Half of reg season • May 18-21: Play-In Tournament • May 22 – July 22: Playoffs
Sean Cunningham: Unique feature with the NBA schedule this season, as it will be released in two segments. The first half of the season schedule released around the start of training camp, while the second is released during the latter part of the first half portion of the schedule.
Ian Begley: NBA announces details for 2020-21 scheduling;
Tim Reynolds: To be clear, this vote tonight doesn’t mean Opening Night is absolutely Dec. 22. But it does clearly suggest that the NBPA is on board, which obviously helps matters a great deal. Still have to work out those little things: Money, escrow, COVID protocols, etc.
The NBA will play a 72-game season, with training camps opening on Dec. 1, the regular season ending on May 16 and the Finals finishing no later than July 22, sources said. The NBA will play in markets, reduce their travel by 25 percent, and significantly reduce cross-country travel especially early in the season, sources said.
The N.B.A.’s goal is to complete the 2020-21 season before the Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled from July 23 to Aug. 8 in 2021. That would allow the league to avoid direct competition with the Olympics and set up the 2021-22 season to return to the N.B.A.’s usual October-through-June pattern. The plan is strongly preferred by the league’s primary media partners, Disney and Turner, following a summer and fall of dismal N.B.A. ratings in a crowded sports landscape, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Players approve starting the season on December 22
Shams Charania: The National Basketball Players Association has voted to tentatively approve NBA’s proposal for the 2020-21 campaign starting on Dec. 22 and playing 72-game season, sources tell @The Athletic @Stadium. NBA set to tip off Christmas week.
Adrian Wojnarowski: The NBPA player rep vote has completed, approving a December 22 start/72-game regular season, source tells ESPN. Next up: NBA/NBPA finishes financial terms on amended CBA, which will take into next week. Expect trade moratorium to be lifted shortly prior to Nov. 18 Draft.
Tim Reynolds: There’s no agreement on the money – yet – but the NBA’s player representatives have decided to back the notion of a Dec. 22 start to the season, AP is told. Talks between the union and league will continue on matters like escrow/COVID testing/etc.
Marc Stein: NBA team player representatives remain on course to huddle virtually later tonight to vote on the league’s proposal to start the 2020-21 season on Dec. 22 … with training camps opening Dec. 1 Two sources briefed on the latest describe union approval of that plan a “formality”
Bobby Marks: Escrow withholding does not impact a cap charge and the amount sent out in a trade (or how it impacts the luxury tax, cap space or hard cap). A $20M player is still $20M.
Progress being made on pre-Christmas NBA start date
NBPA planning to hold a vote on 2020-21 season plans
The National Basketball Players Association is planning to hold a vote on Thursday night or Friday morning regarding the Dec. 22 start format to the 2020-21 season amid the coronavirus pandemic, sources told The Athletic.
The NBPA, led by executive director Michele Roberts, started formal conference calls with players from all 30 teams this week. Players have been holding calls with the NBPA beginning Monday and will go through Thursday morning. Players coming out of several meetings believe a Dec. 22 start is inevitable, sources said.
Shams Charania: NBA/NBPA are deciding between two ‘20-21 scenarios: – Dec. 22: 72 games, regular season ends mid-May, Finals finish around July 22, Christmas revenue – Jan. 18: 60 games, regular season ends in June, Finals end around Aug. 21
NBA running out of time for pre-Christmas start
Optimism still exists that an agreement can be reached on the pre-Christmas start, but it has been tempered in recent days, sources said. NBPA executive director Michele Roberts and union leadership have been talking directly with players about starting the season so quickly after a mid-October finish to the Finals in the Orlando, Florida, bubble, and so far have expressed a preference for a mid-January start to the season. The NBA believes there is somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion in revenue losses next season and beyond by failing to start the season in December, sources said.
The NBA has pushed back to Friday a deadline that keeps open the option of terminating the collective bargaining agreement, which would essentially blow up the league’s financial structure that allows for a 50-50 split of basketball related income (BRI) under the provisions of the CBA. Because of the coronavirus pandemic triggering a force majeure clause in the CBA, both sides have the option of serving notice of 45 days on terminating the agreement, sources said.
NBA running out of time for Dec. 22 start date
The new goal of the league, sources said, is to put together a 72-game slate with reduced cross-country travel. In that scenario, the subsequent 2021-22 season can go off on its normal October-to-June trajectory — perhaps with New Yorkers packed together underneath the Garden’s famous ceiling again.
League offering players a 50-game season?
Marc Stein: NBA players may only be offered a 50-game season, I’m told, if the union insists on a mid-January start rather than the Dec. 22 proposal, because the league’s television partners do not want the 2020-21 season to stray past mid-July … or clash with the Tokyo Olympics
Marc Stein: A 50-game season would reduce player salaries significantly in 2020-21, since NBA pay adheres to a regular-season schedule The NBA’s 72-game model calls for teams to play roughly 14 games a month through May, followed by the playoffs through mid-July — before the Olympics begin
April 10, 2021 | 2:50 pm EDT Update
Jim Eichenhofer: Steven Adams on Zion Williamson after the forward’s 37-15-8 game vs. 76ers: “I know we talk about strength a lot, but that’s the least interesting thing in his game, him being a strong dude. His touch is so good, his footwork is insane.”
Omari Sanfoka II: Wayne Ellington (rest), Jerami Grant (right knee soreness) and Rodney McGruder (right elbow sprain) are all out tonight. Mason Plumlee (concussion protocol) is questionable
Joe Mussatto: Lu Dort is listed as available for tonight and Darius Bazley (left shoulder contusion) is probable. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Isaiah Roby, Mike Muscala and Josh Hall are still out.
Louisville basketball’s leading scorer is testing the NBA Draft waters. Carlik Jones, a graduate transfer who received all-conference honors in his first season with U of L, declared for the 2021 NBA Draft on Saturday “while still maintaining my eligibility as a Cardinal,” he said in a post to his Instagram account.
10 of the 13 Texas Senate Democrats voted in favor of the “Star Spangled Banner Protection Act,” which Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick named a legislative priority after the Dallas Mavericks stopped playing the national anthem before games. Democrats in the Texas Senate overwhelmingly crossed the aisle on Thursday to vote in favor of the “Star Spangled Banner Protection Act,” a conservative-backed bill that would require any professional sports teams with contracts with the state government to play the national anthem before the start of a game.
