Spurs News: San Antonio Spurs and NBA inching closer to return to play

We’re all starved for basketball right now and details about a potential return to play for the San Antonio Spurs and the rest of the NBA are starting to come out

We’ve now gone over two months without regular NBA play. Since then, the primary question on San Antonio Spurs fans’ minds has been when can the team potentially return to play? It’s been a long and complicated process but we’re starting to get some clarity on what a potential timeline could look like.

We should preface all of this by saying that it hasn’t been confirmed by the NBA directly, but it does come from Keith Smith so it should be considered quite credible. Smith writes for Yahoo Sports and was the first to report the possibility of the NBA returning at Disney World. As it turns out he was on the bleeding edge of that story as Disney continues to be viewed as a potential ‘bubble’ environment for teams to play in.

Now Smith is back with more news from an unnamed NBA source. A team executive gave him a sneak peek of a potential schedule that should excite all NBA fans.

Rough NBA timeline that was mentioned to me from a team exec today:Early June – Back in facilitiesMid-late June – CampEarly July – Travel to single-siteMid July – Games startLabor Day-ish – Season endsMid Sept. – DraftWeek later – Free agencyXmas-ish – 20-21 season starts

— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) May 21, 2020

Smith would go on to say that the plan is to get every NBA team to play the 70 games they need to qualify for the majority of their TV deals. This would mean our San Antonio Spurs would play 7 more games at a single location.

The other interesting note is the potential start of the 2020-21 season on Christmas-ish. We’ve discussed the possibility of starting the NBA on Christmas Day before. It’s an idea that has had support on NBA sites like r/NBA and in other forums for years.

The idea is that Christmas is already one of the biggest days of the NBA season, turning it into the starting point for the year would only serve to make it an even bigger deal. It would also shift the majority of the regular season away from the competition with the NFL and college football for viewership.

That said, the primary focus, for now, has to be getting a single site ready to host players, coaches, and team staff in a safe and contained environment. That alone is a mountain of a task that is far from complete. Let’s focus on that before we start looking to next season.

Stay tuned to Smith’s Twitter feed and us here at Air Alamo for the most up to date information on a potential San Antonio Spurs return to play.