The 72-game schedule will be released in the coming weeks.
It’s official: The NBA is coming back Dec.22. The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association announced Monday night that they’ve struck a deal on rules for this coming season, setting the stage for what will be a frenzied few weeks before games resume. Teams will play a 72-game schedule, which will be revealed in the coming weeks. The league said a new system will be used to ensure that the split of basketball-related income continues, one of the many details that had to be collectively bargained with the union because the current agreement between the sides had a great deal of language that needed reworking because of the coronavirus pandemic. Negotiations with free agents will be allowed to begin at 6 p.m. ET on Nov.20, with signings permitted starting at 12:01 p.m. on Nov.22 — an extraordinarily fast window for the NBA, which typically has about a week spanning the start of talks and the beginning of signings. But with training camps this year beginning Dec.1, both sides evidently feel there isn’t a need to draw out the process any longer than necessary. Many rosters could be considerably reshaped by then, with trades likely to be permissible again in the coming days — the exact details there still being worked out — and the NBA draft set to take place Nov.18. Player and team options likely will be settled around that same time.
