NBA Season, Part Deux

The Game Room
1

The NBA season is about to restart, so let’s get back into the swing of things. First, the new rules:

  1. Only 22 teams are participating; the bottom dwellers are being left out. The Bulls, Hawks, Pistons, T-Wolves, Cavs, Knicks (of course) and Hornets are all out. Wait, that’s seven. Someone else too.

  2. The 22 remainders will play eight more regular season games to be added to their current records, and some play ins to determine 16 playoff teams and seeiding.

  3. Unlike the way it usually works, seeding will reset playoff matchups as the playoffs go on.

  4. All the games, for now, are in Orlando.

  5. The regular season games in Orlando will not affect the draft order and lottery; that will be based on the records when the season was suspended.

So what will happen? What makes this jumbly, to me, is that after a four month layoff we don’t even know who will be good. In mid March it was pretty apparent the Bucks were the best team in the league, with the LA teams, Raptors, and Celtics being threats. Who the hell knows now though? It’s practically a new season - a 4 month layoff isn’t much different from an entire offseason. Maybe some key point guard gained 10 pounds. Maybe some guys won’t gel on court.

2

  1. The Warriors are the other team eliminated.

  2. I have no idea who’ll be good, but there’ll be a lot of guys not playing either due to COVID-19 concerns or because they don’t want to detract from the BLM movement.

  3. All I know is, if this is finally what it takes for the Pacers to win the NBA championship, I’m counting it as our first title and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.

3

Is there a movement among NBA players to not play because of BLM? I’m not sure I see an obvious connection; the NBA is hardly like the NFL, after all. What does boycotting professional basketball do for BLM?

4

There’s a few, with Kyrie Irving being the chief advocate, but others like Dwight Howard, Lou Williams, and Malcolm Brogdon, are all supporting the idea in some fashion.

The key idea is that the lack of sports has allowed a spotlight to shine on the protests and BLM movement like never before. With the NBA and NHL returning, and the NFL season about to ramp up, some fear they will become distractions and allow the narrative to be lost.