As the NBA’s teams, players and administration are holding out hope that there is a way to save the season and crown a 2020 Champion. But one of the butterfly effects of trying to salvage the season will presumably be moving the 2020 NBA Draft, which will need to get done sometime before school begins in the fall at universities.
ESPN’s duo of Adrian Wojnarowski and Jonathan Givony reported on Friday morning that teams have united to ask the league to push back the draft from its original date on June 25 to at least August 1, with the hopes of having a draft in early September.
An Aug. 1 date would be flexible, based on whether the league restarts and advances the regular season and playoffs through the summer. In that case, most envision a September draft and free-agency period based on a season that concludes around Labor Day weekend.
So, the hope for the league is that they are able to salvage the season where it can end in the latter part of the summer and still have an “off-season” in September. According to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, the best-case scenario looks like the season ending in September with the following 2020-21 season hopefully starting around Christmas.
Whether those scenarios will play out is another story, but the NBA has an idea of how they may come back if the public health crisis subsides.
