NBA players scheduling votes on next season plan

A person with knowledge of the situation says the NBA’s players are planning to vote on whether they would prefer to start the coming season in December or wait until January, with that decision expected before the league’s board of governors meets to potentially formalize some plans Friday.

The vote by members of the National Basketball Players Association will show how many prefer a 72-game season that starts Dec. 22, or a season of perhaps 58 or 60 games that would start on Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 18, said the person who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been publicly announced.

Among the issues: revenue. The NBA believes starting on Dec. 22 would allow for $500 million in additional revenue for the coming season, and the league’s primary television partners also want that start date in part to allow for the traditional Christmas telecasts. Some players, however, have said starting in December is too soon for teams like the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat, who were in the Walt Disney World bubble until mid-October for the NBA Finals.

But a January start would mean less revenue, on the heels of a season where the league missed revenue projections by $1.5 billion and 14% of the regular season wasn’t played because of the pandemic — meaning players lost roughly the same percentage of their salaries.

“Honestly, there’s a level of compromise on each side,” Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic, that team’s player rep to the NBPA, said this week. “You know, this has not been easy with everything that’s been thrown at the league and thrown at us just as people are trying to figure things out. So, there’s a level of compromise on both sides but we’re continuing to talk. … I just hope that we can get to the conclusion that works for everybody.”

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