NBA Schedule 2020: When Regular Season, Playoffs, Finals Games Will Be Played In Season's Return

The NBA suspended the 2019-2020 season indefinitely on March 11 when Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. The league has a plan to return to play with 22 teams vying for the championship at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida.

Teams will start a week-long training camp on June 30, according to ESPN, and fly to Orlando on July 7. The season is scheduled to resume on July 31 after a 142-day hiatus.

Each team will play eight regular-season games. Those contests are expected to be played over a 16-day span. According to ESPN, every team is expected to play one back-to-back.

The start date for the playoffs depends on the possibility of a short play-in tournament.

If the No.8 seed and No.9 seed in a conference are separated by fewer than four games in the final standings, they will face off for the last playoff berth. The No.8 seed would clinch a postseason spot with one victory. The No.9 seed needs to defeat the No.8 seed twice in order to get into the playoffs, where they would meet the No.1 seed in a first-round series.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst has reported that a play-in tournament would force teams to play a back-to-back in the first round.

Some preliminary expectations on Orlando format, per sources:
16-day regular season - 5-to-6 games per day.
Each team expected to play one back-to-back among its eight regular-season games.
NBA Finals format expected to include games every other day during best-of-seven series. https://t.co/Lrc7JJfvPU
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 4, 2020

The playoffs will start sometime in August. There is no set date for the start of each round. According to Adrian Wojnarowski, the league will be “aggressive” in starting one round shortly after the series in the previous round ends.

The 2020 NBA Finals won’t conclude any later than Oct. 12, which is the last possible date for Game 7. It’s expected that there will be one day off in between each Finals game.

The six-game 2019 NBA Finals started on May 30 and concluded 14 days later on June 13. If Game 7 of the 2020 Finals is played on Oct. 12, that means the series would’ve started on Sept. 30.

The 2019 playoffs lasted exactly 60 days. The NBA is looking to complete its eight-game regular season in Orlando and the entire playoffs in no more than 74 days.

Before the league was suspended, the playoffs were scheduled to start on April 18. The NBA Finals were supposed to start on June 4 and end no later than June 21.