The 2011-2012 NBA season will begin Christmas Day, and each team will play a 66 game schedule. This means that only 16 games will be lost after an NBA Lockout, which had been in effect for five months, and looked like it would wipe out the entire season. This is joyous news to all basketball fans, who thought that the entire season might be lost, due to the owners and players not being able to come together on a collective bargaining agreement. And now Christmas day will feature five nationally televised games including the Celtics at the Knicks, the Heat at the Mavericks, and the Bulls at the Lakers.
And while no league likes to miss games, the NBA still finds itself in a very good position to have an exciting season. The majority of sports fans usually find themselves occupied with the NFL and college football during the fall, and do not start caring about the NBA until around Christmas anyway. So while the diehard fans may be missing basketball right now, for many it will be as if there never was a lockout. Plus, now there will be a massive amount of hype leading up to the Christmas day games, and the return of basketball, which will generate more publicity for the league.
The 66 game schedule has its positives and negatives. On the up side, each team playing 16 less games will be a welcome change to many coaches, players, and fans. One of the complaints that comes up frequently about the NBA is that the regular season is too long, so many fans will enjoy this change for the 2011-2012 season. Also many NBA season ticket holders, will enjoy not having to pay for eight extra home games.
On the down side, due to the amount of time, on back to back days, it will also mean teams having to play three days in a row at least a couple of times during the season. The congested schedule will most likely put teams with older players, who benefit from extra days off, at a disadvantage. So teams like the Celtics and Mavericks may have trouble getting through the regular season.
Now as the league and the players association work on finalizing the new CBA, the NBA is preparing itself for a condensed off season and training camp. All of the preparations for a new season which are usually spread out over months will now have to be accomplished in just a few weeks. Expect a large amount of NBA signings and trades the day free agency begins. Also the new CBA has created the Amnesty Clause, which allows every team to wipe out what player’s contract from their payroll, which then allows every team under the salary cap to bid on those players, auction-style, with the highest bid winning out. This will make even more players become available, and create more chaos.
Now that the lockout is coming to an end, NBA trade rumors have once again taken over sports talk shows. Most of the trade buzz surrounds the New Orleans Hornets’ Chris Paul, and the Orlando Magic’s Dwight Howard, both of who are going into the final year of their contracts. Chris Paul has made known that he wants to play for the Knicks, and joins his friends Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony in New York. However this might be a difficult trade to get done, because the Knicks gave away almost all of their young talent away in the Carmelo Anthony trade last winter. Many believe that Dwight Howard wants to play for the Los Angeles Lakers, but the Lakers are currently low on cap room. Howard coming to the Lakers would most likely require them to part ways with at least Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom. The Nets have also shown a great amount of interest in Howard, looking to pair him with superstar point guard Deron Williams.
While no one wanted to have an NBA Lockout, the bottom line is that things could have turned out much worse. Now NBA fans will have an exciting 66 game season, and an exciting four full playoff rounds, and by June everyone will probably have forgotten there ever was a lockout.