NBA Issues Survey To GMs On Possible Formats To Resume Season

In a recent survey sent to the NBA’s 30 general managers, several different proposals for play formats were proposed as the league weighs resuming the 2019/20 season, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reports.

Ranging from a direct-to-playoffs format to resuming the regular season, a number of different scenarios are mentioned. As the NBA zeroed in on Disney World in Orlando to resume play sometime in mid-July, the following scenarios are on the table:

  • Playoffs: The top eight teams in each conference would advance directly to the postseason.
  • “Playoffs Plus”: Increasing the number of teams that receive a chance to continue playing through either a play-in tournament or replacing the playoffs first round with a group stage.
    • Note: The number of teams to return in this scenario would be either 18, 20, 22, or 24.
  • Regular Season: Under this proposal, all 30 teams would resume the season where it ended and continue on as scheduled.
  • Regular Season + Play-In:  All teams play the same amount of games which would then include a play-in tournament and conclude with a traditional postseason.
  • Playoffs Plus play-in: A play-in tournament which includes bubble teams playing for the eighth seed; a play-in tournament for the seventh and eighth seed; or a stage that replaces the first playoff round and all groups. In this scenario, every team would play two games against each group opponent and the top two teams from each group would advance to a traditional second round.

Further discussions in the survey include the amount of scrimmage games that would be played before a restart (between two and five), the total number of regular-season games that would be played (72 or 76), whether or not to do a traditional playoff format or reseed all teams, and when the season would end (Labor Day, Sept. 15, Oct. 1, Oct. 15 or Nov. 1).

Discussions continue on how and when the NBA season could be resumed safely and without fans in attendance.

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