Here’s the Fort Worth Star Telegram reporting on Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s take on fitting the puzzle pieces together regarding how the rest of this season may play out and when the 2020-21 season might begin:
Mark Cuban believes the NBA can still salvage its 2019-20 season, despite it being suspended for two months and counting amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Dallas Mavericks owner pointed to Dec. 25 as the start date for next season and then said you just have to work backward for a potential timeline to resume this season. Most teams, Cuban said, would not be playing an extended schedule as there’s a limited number of teams that would advance through the playoffs.
That, he said, would give the league more leeway as to a hard deadline to resume this season.
“How much of an offseason do we need for the draft, workouts and guys to rest?” Cuban said during an interview on ESPN 103.3 FM on Monday. “Worst-case — we kind of squished the schedule and started late July, early August. That’s just me speculating. Go play a few warm-up games to finish out the season and finalize playoff positioning, then play the playoffs.”
Even without the coronavirus pandemic reshaping much of the world’s schedule, it was possible that future NBA seasons were going to start later in the year. The current suspended-play situation only seems to increase that possibility.
At this point, we’re all playing a waiting game that revolves around health and safety above everything else.