"A Little Bit Early"- Adam Silver on December 1 Start of 2020-2021 Season

As Aaron Atayde said in last week's episode of "Jump Thru Hoops" with Jinno Rufino, "Adam Silver should be the president of the world" as Silver's resumption plan of the National Basketball Association (NBA) inside the house of Mickey Mouse in Orlando has become a model for the rest of the sports world at a time when sports has been directly impacted by the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic. 

As the 2020 NBA playoffs almost entering its next rounds, planning how and when the 2020-2021 season will open is the next big thing NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and company. As great as the "bubble idea" is at the moment, even Silver has already admitted that playing a full 82-game regular season using the same bubble set-up would be impossible to achieve as playing in the current set-up will be financially unsustainable if they are do it for next season. That is why the league is likely to delay the initial start date of the 2020-2021 season which has previously been set on December 1, 2020.

For Silver, that December 1 opening of next season is "feeling a little bit early" as his main goal is to "get fans back into the arenas". He added "If we could push back (the opening date) even a little longer and increase the likelihood of having fans in our arenas, that's what we would be targeting" 

With this possibility, the dates for the NBA Draft and the start of the free agency will be pushed back too. If and when the opening of next season is to be pushed back, one of the ideas that the league is considering is to have a March to October season that included a three-week break in August for the Olympics in Tokyo. Either way, it's going to be a long wait-and-see game for everyone but one thing is certain here: Adam Silver knows what he's doing. Nobody thought he could make the Orlando bubble work and yet, it's still working. 

Photo is from Blazer's Edge