clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Feel Good Friday: The NBA is Coming Back

A quick update on the return of the NBA

Minnesota Timberwolves v Houston Rockets Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images

Good morning, folks. Once again, we’ve made it through another week. This one was longer than most others, but we’ve got some great news to lead us into the weekend.

Of course, that being that the NBA has settled on a Dec 22 start date, a 72-game regular season, and various other details that we’ll get to.

We discussed the Dec 22 start date on Wednesday, so we won’t hit on that much more here, other than the fact that there was simply no chance the league was going to budge on that.

Lifting the trade moratorium slightly prior to the draft makes sense. There’s no point in making teams wait until draft night to begin agreeing to trades. With any luck, we’ll start to hear some legitimate trade buzz very, very soon.

You want chaos? Well, damn it, I’ll give you chaos. I’d assume that part of the reason for moving up free agency is that free agency has basically already started in the shadows. Teams, other than the Lakers and Heat, have been off for a looooooong time. I refuse to believe teams haven’t already started to negotiate deals in the shadows.

What makes this really exciting is that changing the order of operations means teams may begin to fill holes on their roster before the draft. To me, that’s going to make the draft much more interesting.

Unfortunately, the NBA wants to ruin our fun.

Nevertheless, this is something I’d like to see in the future. I honestly think it makes more sense to run free agency first, and then follow it with the draft than vice versa. Mostly, though, the idea of monster free agents remaining unsigned at the time of the draft, but being eligible to sign at any moment, is a super interesting idea and opens up cleaner, easier sign-and-trade alternatives.

Lastly, here’s a few financial updates.