NBPA votes to approve 22-team format for 2020 finish
By Ty Anderson, 985TheSportsHub.com
The NBA will move ahead with a 22-team finish to the 2019-20 season following Friday’s approval from the National Basketball Players Association, The NBPA has approved the 22-team return format for the NBA, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium. Players and league have approved new format.
The plan, which was first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski earlier this week, will see 22 of the league’s 30 teams return to the court sometime in July with the hopes of crowning an NBA champion by Oct. 12, if necessary.
The return, which will feature 13 teams from the West, and nine in the East, will begin with eight regular-season games before the official start of the postseason.
Should the ninth seed finish within four games of the No. 8 seed at the end of that eight-game finish, a play-in for the final playoff spot will commence, meaning the No. 8 seed will have to win one game before the No. 9 seed wins two (basically look at it like the No. 8 seed team has a 3-2 series lead over the No. 9 seed).
This is why the league’s return will include 13 from the West and just nine from the East, as the NBA suspended its season with five teams within six games of the final playoff spot in the West while the ninth-seed Wizards were the only non-playoff team in the East within five and a half games of the eighth seed.
Per Charania, the NBPA was also informed that players would be subject to nightly COVID-19 testing upon a resumption, and that any positive test would come with a mandatory seven-day quarantine for the player. It’s also worth noting that they’re going to administer light swab testing and not the poke-your-brain-looking nasal testing.
The 2019-20 NBA season, which has been paused since Rudy Gobert’s positive coronavirus test on Mar. 11, will finish their year at Orlando’s Disney World complex.
