NBA provides update to offseason timeline

The NBA had a call with its Board of Governors yesterday to lay out a timeline for the fall and winter, and naturally the details of that call have made their way to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

Shams has a full breakdown on The Athletic, so click that because he deserves the page view more than I do. Highlights and my thoughts:

• The NBA plans to play a full 82 game slate whenever they start. That would almost definitely interfere with the start of the 2021-22 season, so I’m very interested to see what the long term plan here would be.
• The season will start no sooner than Christmas Day (which would honestly be super cool), and the league will provide a minimum eight week notice before the start of the season. That means the Christmas start date would have to be finalized by October 30th.
• The NBA is planning on playing games in home markets with reduced travel instead of using a bubble. A couple things with this—one, good call on the bubble. No way players would sign off on doing that for a whole season. Two, the idea of reduced travel potentially means baseball-like series between teams that have multiple games against each other. That might be pretty cool.
• The draft is still scheduled for Wednesday, November 18. Smart avoiding football Thursdays.
• Draft workouts will be spread out over September and October. Teams will be allowed to hold in person workouts and virtual interviews from mid-September to early October. They’ll be allowed to do in-person interviews from mid-October up until the draft.
• The draft will probably function like the NFL’s did, with the picks being made virtually by teams in war rooms in their home markets.