San Antonio Spurs: Players pushing for delayed start to 2021 NBA season

Players are asking for the 2021 NBA Season start to get moved back

One of the biggest questions facing the San Antonio Spurs and NBA during the offseason is when can we expect to see other important NBA events happen. We’ve got a date nailed down for the 2020 NBA Draft but outside of that, very little is set in stone.

We’ve seen speculation about when the ’20-21 season could start. It was recently reported that the NBA was eyeing a date before Christmas for the season restart. But recent developments are making that seem a little less likely.

Since mid-December was tossed out as a potential start time players from various teams have suggested that they wouldn’t be there at the beginning of the season. Now it seems that those players have banded together to offer a different scheduling suggestion.

San Antonio Spurs News: Season could start in mid-January instead of December

Yahoo Sources: Substantial faction of players and star players pushing for NBA season to start Jan. 18 — MLK Day — with a free-agency commencement of Dec. 1.

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) October 28, 2020

As far as compromises go, January 18th isn’t bad. It’s roughly a month after the date that’s being put out there right now. The NBA could accomplish a lot with another month of the offseason. We all know the teams, and players could use it.

First and foremost, players need time off. Some of them have been out of the bubble for months now but others like the Lakers and Heat have barely left. They need time to recover before diving right back into another season.

Another reason to push back the season start would be that it gives teams more time to acclimate their rookies to the league as well as plan free agency moves. Right now the league schedule looks like it’ll have free agency crammed into the few weeks between the draft in mid-November and the season starts in mid-December.

In that month, teams will have to coordinate bringing their rookies to their respective cities, while also navigating free agency. Although it has been reported that teams and players are already making their deals.

In any case, the NBA could certainly use the added time that a January 18th start would give them. Teams need time to new players sped up and all of their players need time to get back into shape. If teams start play in mid-December I’ll bet that we see something resembling a 10 am Sunday morning run at LifeTime more often than we see NBA basketball.

We might not have clarity on when the San Antonio Spurs and the rest of the league will start up for quite some time. Still, this storyline remains a must follow until we get an answer.