By JACOB POLACHECK
The NBA is officially back.
The NBA Board of Governors voted Thursday to approve a 22-team format to restart the 2019-20 season in Orlando, the league announced.
The Board approved a tentative start date of Friday, July 31 to return to play.
The restart is contingent upon an agreement with The Walt Disney Company to use the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando as a single site for a campus for all games, practices and housing for the remainder of the season.
If, as tentatively scheduled, the season resumes on July 31, then the 2020 NBA Draft Lottery would be rescheduled for Aug. 25, the 2020 NBA Draft would be held on Oct. 15 and the 2020-21 NBA regular season would likely begin on Dec. 1, 2020.
The NBA Draft withdrawal date is now Aug. 3, or 10 days after the NBA Combine.
Players testing the NBA Draft waters now have two months to make a decision.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the vote was 29-1, with the Portland Trail Blazers voting against the proposal.
The NBA is working to finalize a comprehensive season restart plan with the NBA Players Association.
Teams will begin training in Orlando starting July 9-11, ESPN reported.
The eight teams who didn’t qualify for the postseason are done until next season.
Based on the format that the Board approved Thursday, the 22 returning teams would be the 16 teams (eight per conference) in current playoff positions and the six teams that are currently six games or fewer behind the eighth seed in their respective conferences. Those two groups comprise teams with the NBA’s 22 best records.
“The Board’s approval of the restart format is a necessary step toward resuming the NBA season,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement Thursday. “While the COVID-19 pandemic presents formidable challenges, we are hopeful of finishing the season in a safe and responsible manner based on strict protocols now being finalized with public health officials and medical experts. We also recognize that as we prepare to resume play, our society is reeling from recent tragedies of racial violence and injustice, and we will continue to work closely with our teams and players to use our collective resources and influence to address these issues in very real and concrete ways.”
The top 16 teams in the Eastern and Western conferences will be joined by teams currently within six games of eighth place in the two conferences — New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns and Washington Wizards.
The play-in tournament will include the No. 8 and No. 9 seeds — if the ninth seed finishes the regular season within four games of the eighth. In that case, the No. 9 seed would need to beat No. 8 seed twice to earn the playoff berth, while the No. 8 would need one win from the two potential games.
The 14 NBA Lottery teams would be the eight teams that do not participate in the restart and the six teams that participate in the restart but do not qualify for the playoffs. These teams would be seeded in the lottery and assigned odds based on their records through games of March 11. The 16 playoff teams would draft in inverse order of their combined records across regular-season games and seeding games.
This story has been updated.
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