After much deliberation and debate, the NBA is set to return to the hardwood in Orlando with a 22-team, abbreviated regular season before the resumption of the postseason, as reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Wednesday. The 22 teams will be comprised of the 16 teams currently in the playoffs as well as New Orleans, San Antonio, Sacramento and Portland and Phoenix in the Western Conference and Washington in the Eastern Conference.
All teams will play an eight-game regular season comprised of what would have been the next eight games on the schedule, though the details of those games may likely need some fine-tuning. If, after those eight games, the ninth seed is within four games of the eighth seed, a play-in tournament will occur between the two teams in which the No. 9 seed will need to beat the No. 8 seed twice before the No. 8 seed wins once.
Currently, the Blazers, Pelicans and Kings are all 3.5 games behind the No. 8 seed while the Spurs are four games back and the Suns six games back. In the Eastern Conference, the Magic are 5.5 ahead of the Wizards.
The season is set to begin July 31 with the latest possible finish date being an NBA Finals Game 7 on October 12 with all of it taking place in Orlando at Disney.
