The NBA released on Tuesday the competition calendar for the 2020-21 season, which opens a format with the news of 72 matches, divided into two halves, with a six-day break from All-Star Weekend, which will not be held due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Tonight’s announcement served to present the structure, format, and dates of when the full competition schedule for the first and second half will be released.
The official competition periods will go from December 22 to March 4, 2021 to fulfill the first half and the second will start from March 11 to May 16.
While from May 18 to 21 the so-called “Pass to Playoffs Tournament” will be played, which will be played by the four teams that qualify from seventh to tenth place in each of the Eastern and Western Conferences when the regular season has concluded.
As of May 22, the playoffs will begin and the NBA Finals are scheduled to have a deadline of July 22 if the series is extended until the seventh and decisive game.
The calendar for the first half of the season, which will run from December 22 to March 4, will be announced at the start of the training camp, scheduled for 15 days from now, on December 1.
Meanwhile, the league will not publish the content of the second half of the calendar until after the competition of the first has been completed.
That will include the rest of the team’s 72 games that were not previously scheduled, as well as the games that were postponed due to various circumstances, especially if there were any contact with COVID-19, in the first half of the season that “reasonably can add “to the rest of the calendar.
The break of the Weekend of the Stars will take place from March 5 to 10, between the two halves and will serve, as is tradition, in giving players a break, which in this case will be complete because they will not have to participate in any type of event when its celebration is canceled.
The second half of the season will take place from March 11 to May 16, 2021 with a schedule that will allow the league to make the necessary adjustments so that they can achieve the maximum balance within the competition.
Then comes the great news of the so-called “Pass to Playoffs Tournament”, which will take place from May 18 to 21 before the postseason competition begins, scheduled for May 22.
Each NBA team will play against the clubs within its conference three times for a total of 42 games, while it will face the clubs in the opposing conference twice each (30 games).
Within each team’s division, the league has already assigned which opponents will be played twice at home and which ones will be played twice on the road.
Each division within a conference will play the five teams from another intra-conference division twice at home, and the remaining five division teams twice on the road.
The league reported that last Thursday the Board of Governors voted and unanimously approved the proposed tournament to enter the playoffs for one year.
Teams with the seventh and eighth highest winning percentage in each conference will have two chances to reach the playoffs, while the ninth and 10th highest winning teams will have one.
The “Game Seven-Eight”, as defined by the NBA, will be between the seventh and eighth teams, while the “Game Nine-Ten” will be between clubs nine and 10.
The winner of the “Seven-Eight” match will automatically move to seventh place in their respective conference, while the loser will receive the winner of the “Nine-Ten” in their field and the winner will qualify for the playoffs as eighth.
The NBA Finals are scheduled until July 22 if the series is extended until the seventh and decisive game.
With the Summer Olympics, scheduled to start the next July 23, in Tokyo, and the qualification tournaments for the four remaining places in the men’s field, established from the June 29 to July 4, 2021, it is almost certain that it eliminates several NBA players considering their partition in them.
However, the great objective of the NBA with the new format and calendar for the 2020-21 regular season is not to favor that the stars can be in Tokyo 2021 but rather that their competition does not coincide with the Olympic one so as not to lose television audience.
