SPORTS
The next NBA season is completely in flux
By Marc BermanSeptember 10, 2020 | 2:20pm
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With the draft being pushed back from Oct. 16 to mid-November, league sources told The Post that the season opener will almost certainly be pushed back until after Jan. 1 – with no consensus on even the month.
According to a source, some league executives would like to see next season’s opener land on Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 18 — considering the climate of the times.
However, sources have suggested the NBA is completely open-minded about a starting date for February – and March has not been completely ruled out either.
“The league may want to wait as a long as possible so fans can be there,’’ one NBA source said. “They may want to wait for a vaccine and that may not happen by mid-January.’’
Some players threatened to cancel the season in the Orlando bubble last month after Jacob Blake was shot by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Beginning the season on MLK Day would seem appropriate in that regard.
MLK Day has long been a staple of the NBA season, in which nationally televised games are played from noon to midnight. If mid-January is when the first games take place, that will mean the Knicks will have gone more than ten months without a regular-season game. They last played March 11 in Atlanta, when the season got halted for the pandemic.
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That is why the Knicks and the rest of the “Delete 8’’ will begin their voluntary mini-camps on Monday, as new hire Tom Thibodeau makes his coaching debut with the team.
According to a league source, the Knicks expect most of the team to participate for some part of the three weeks. They will also host a few players who aren’t on the 15-man roster but have G-League contracts.
The first week of mini-camp is only individual workouts, but all players have to be tested for COVID-19 each day. The last two weeks are group workouts in which the team has to be secluded in a bubble environment. The Knicks are planning to stay in a hotel.
As such, some Knicks players will only participate in the individual workouts and opt out of the bubble portion, which includes group practices and intrasquad scrimmages.
9/10/2020 3:06 PM