NEW YORK, NY (WSAU) — The Milwaukee Bucks are headed to Orlando to restart the 2019-’20 NBA season.
ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski is reporting that the league’s Board of Governors will hold a conference call at 11:30 AM CT on Thursday to approve the league’s restart plan, which includes 22 teams meeting at the Disney Wide World of Sports complex to finish out the regular season.
Each team would play eight regular-season games, which would then be used for seeding purposes for the playoffs.
In addition to the top eight seeds in the Eastern Conference (MIL, TOR, BOS, MIA, IND, PHI, BKN, ORL) the Washington Wizards would participate in the restart because they are within six games of a playoff spot. The remaining clubs below them would be left home.
In the West, a total of 13 clubs would be invited to the restart including the eight top seeds and Portland, New Orleans, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Phoenix.
Minnesota and Golden State would miss the cut. The Warriors have already been eliminated from playoff contention at the time the league shut down in March.
Milwaukee, Toronto, Boston, and the LA Lakers had already clinched playoff births at that time.
Details such as the schedule of games and TV broadcast info will be released at a later date. Some games are expected to be carried by local TV affiliates such as FOX Sports Wisconsin to satisfy local broadcast agreements which generally call for 70 games to be aired per season. At the time of the shutdown, most local affiliates had not hit that quota.
Orlando will also host a Major League Soccer re-start tournament this summer after the league and its players’ association reached a deal Wednesday morning on a restructured and extended Collective Bargaining Agreement. Details of that tournament are also pending.
