What the NBA’s December start plans means everything speeds up for the Orlando Magic

The NBA is planning to start its 2021 season in December. That will have several consequences and for the Orlando Magic to make some decisions.

The biggest question facing the NBA has been to fill in all the details.

After the Nov. 18 Draft, officially announced earlier this week, there was a fair amount of mystery as to when the NBA season will start again. The league and the players association still have to renegotiate the salary cap for this season, hoping to blunt any massive drops in the salary cap for planning purposes for the team and maintain some competitive stability.

Everyone assumed the league would still take a breath and give everyone time to get their feet settled. Nobody even knows when free agency will begin.

There is a lot at stake for the NBA. They have certain guarantees to their television partners to fulfill. They learned they have to have their season finished by the end of June or else television ratings and other traditional metrics for viewership will lag. And they still have a pandemic to plan around. If they want fans in the building, things are not looking good for them.

The general consensus was the league would wait and aim for either a Martin Luther King Jr. Day start in late January or something in early February around when the All-Star Game would take place (essentially Valentines’ Day).

So it was surprising after the league seemed so cautious and strategic with its planning that word leaked out the NBA was planning for a Christmas Day start, aiming for Dec. 22 as the potential start date for the season.

The reported plan is for teams to play a 70-72-game season beginning in late December. A lot of this structure is still under negotiation. But the plan would allow the league to get in nearly a full season and end on time so the 2022 calendar will return to an October-June season and so players could participate in the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo.

There is still a lot to sort out. And suddenly there is not a lot of time to sort through it.

That Dec. 22 date is only eight weeks away. That means the NBA Draft takes place in about three weeks and then there is merely five weeks to get through free agency, the offseason and training camp before the season begins.

That is not a lot of time. But at least players will have an end date to ramp up their preparations for the start of the season.

Clearly, the owners are trying to put some pressure on the players to accept this expedited timeline.

For a team like the Orlando Magic, this is definitely a major wrench in their plans. This revised schedule is going to create a lot of problems for a team that seems ripe for change but still envisions itself competing for the postseason.

There will be a lot of consequences to this season — many unintended.

Shorter offseason, more caution?

Coach Steve Clifford likes to say that every team is different. Every team has to go through training camp again and start from ground zero.

The Orlando Magic thought their continuity from the 2019 to 2020 season would give them a boost at the start. Injuries disrupted that. Clifford said the team did not have the training camp they hoped for. That was really the first sign of trouble.

But ultimately, once the injuries began to subside — about the time Nikola Vucevic returned in mid-December or when D.J. Augustin returned to the lineup in late January — the team started to come together a lot more. They survived the season because of their continuity and familiarity.

The reality is that a lot of the Magic’s success in 2019 was built in the preseason training camps in September. Those days learning Clifford’s system and expectations were vital to the team coming together and having the reserves to make their run later in the season.

There is no time to build all of that now. That vital preseason training time is out the window. Clifford said last week that several players have already returned to Orlando to start working out in the team’s practice facility (Terrence Ross has posted some video of him sneaking into the WWE ThunderDome in the Amway Center bowl). Others will surely trickle back in now that a firm finish line is in place.

Players at least now have eight weeks to ramp themselves up for the season.

Orlando Magic

But this shortened preseason time is going to mean new players will have less time to integrate with their teammates. It likely means fewer (if any) preseason games and almost certainly a shorter training camp.

And that may cause a fairly robust trading market to tighten a little bit. Teams on the border like the Magic may make their decisions whether to go for the playoffs or take a step back and reassess things before the season.

Orlando believes competing and playing for the postseason is the best path for growing. So they might exhibit more caution then they otherwise would have. This shortened offseason might push the timeline one way or another.

Knowing they have to spend this season most of all developing Markelle Fultz, Mohamed Bamba and Chuma Okeke, they might value stability for their sake over making the kind of changes that will eventually become necessary.

They know they do not have to make any moves yet and they could use the trade deadline and next offseason to begin truly transforming the team.

Essentially, this shortened offseason and schedule is going to force the Magic to decide what they want their season to be in 2021 and decide it now so they can effectuate a plan quickly to make the most of it.

Get ready for travel

The other thing about this proposal is a note that came from Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.

The world — and especially the United States — is still dealing with a raging pandemic. The biggest concern remains to stop any penetration of the virus into NBA circles. And the league saw how MLB struggled in its early season with the virus while trying to have teams travel to home cities. The NFL is still seemingly struggling to stop any further outbreaks.

The NBA is going to try to limit travel it seems by having teams try to play all their road games to certain areas and all at once. So, for instance, if the Orlando Magic would travel to New York and play all their road games against the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets in one trip (and possibly even the Philadelphia 76ers in the same trip).

For a team like the Orlando Magic — and other teams like the Miami Heat and Portland Trail Blazers especially — this could mean especially long road trips to knock out clusters of teams. Of course, that should also mean some pretty long homestands.

The Magic’s schedule, in other words, is going to resemble the Orlando Solar Bears’ schedule in some ways. Homestands that last multiple weeks along with similarly long road trips to areas like the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

Orlando typically is among the teams that travel the most in the league. That is just a function of geography. It is a reality of the schedule the Magic get every year. They face some difficult road trips throughout the season — the team complained about how difficult its December and January was this season with even Clifford openly and publicly saying he had never faced a schedule so demanding.

But this year could see some odd trips for the team. It could see some long road trips. And just what Orlando can accomplish will likely depend on how they manage these road trips. Or when these road trips pop up in the schedule.

This is a reality every team will have to deal with to some extent. But it is one the Magic will be keenly aware of.

Play-In Possibilities

The Orlando Magic had two goals when they entered the NBA’s campus in July. The first was to be playing in a manner where they could make an impact and compete in their playoff series. And the second was to avoid playing in the play-in game against the Washington Wizards.

Orlando had a 5.5 game lead on Washington when the teams arrived to Disney. The Magic only had to maintain a 1.5-game lead to avoid that play-in game. They ended up expanding their lead and making the playoffs comfortably seven games better than the Wizards.

Orlando was clearly a playoff team in last year’s Eastern Conference. And the concern of having to put an entire season’s worth of work on the line was a scary prospect.

Whereas the Western Conference actually needed a play-in series with how bunched up all the teams fighting for eighth were — the Portland Trail Blazers gained the advantage in the series by only a half-game over the Memphis Grizzlies and Phoenix Suns in the standings.

The play-in game between the Blazers and the Grizzlies was fantastic television. It gave a real playoff feel to the game and the long-talked-about idea seemed to click. The NBA appears to be exploring a similar play-in experiment this season. It was a star-making performance from both Damian Lillard and Ja Morant.

The NBA is not leaving that idea off the table. The league is considering bringing the play-in series back for next season.

For a team like the Magic that can cut both ways, of course.

Orlando at the moment should believe it has a playoff team. And the team’s goals should remain to return to the postseason for a third straight year.

There are plenty of other teams angling for that spot too. A play-in series would certainly lower the margin for error for making the playoffs of having a chance to go to the playoffs.

It could mean the Magic will have to play some extra games to fend off a challenger. Or it could mean the team will be able to go through some growing pains and still have a chance at making the postseason.