Health Officials Concerned With December Start

Health officials around the league are concerned how players’ bodies will react to a 72-game season after a reduced offseason, Baxter Holmes of ESPN reports.

Those concerns are ramped up due to travel, rather than playing all the games in one location, as the NBA did during the restart. The lack of travel allowed the players to recover more easily during the restart’s condensed schedule.

The league is expected to make adjustments in the schedule in order to reduce travel. Those adjustments could include playing the same opponent twice in the same city and playing more games against opponents in nearby markets.

The 71-day gap between the last game of the Finals and the projected December 22 start is the shortest offseason in the history of any major sports league, Holmes notes. That could affect how the two conference champions — the Lakers and Heat — approach the first month of the season.

The eight teams that didn’t participate in the restart could also be adversely affected. As unnamed Eastern Conference trainer told Holmes, “They haven’t played competitively since March. How are they (going to) react?”

In a normal offseason, players typically trickle into their team’s practice facility for a few weeks prior to the official start of a month-long training camp. That timeline will now be cut in half, though the NBA has allowed teams to open their facilities for informal workouts.

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