Adam Silver, the Commissioner of the NBA, admitted the coronavirus crisis could shift the calendar of the league permanently.
Silver added it is a possibility to move the start date of the league to around Christmas since if this season does resume, it will finish in July or August.
“Possibly. Those are things we’re always talking about, whether they’re executives at your company, ESPN, or at Warner Media, together with our regional sports networks.
I will say the conventional media calendar has changed so much certainly since I got into this business. Primetime means something very different than they used to, now that people essentially carry around televisions with them in their pockets. The summer is viewed differently than it was historically from a television standpoint.
Regardless of whether we had been going through all this, it’s something the league office together with our teams has been spending a lot of time on,” Silver told Rachel Nichols of ESPN, as transcribed by Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice.
The NBA has suspended the season for at least 30 days, due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
