Report: New NBA season to start on January 18, 2021

A basketball on the floor. /VCG

The new NBA season, which should be the 2020-21 campaign, may only happen in 2021 – John Hollinger of The Athletic reported that the new season will begin on January 18, 2021.

That means the NBA will return on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and there won't be Christmas Day games. According to Hollinger, the league will give teams eight-week-notice ahead of the start of the season, which will be November 23.

Postponing the beginning of the season was just the first step and more will follow. Since the COVID-19 pandemic is still far from under control in the U.S., should the league continue to put all games in a bubble? It's true that it worked behind closed doors in Orlando but let's face it: only 20 teams entered the bubble for eight regular season games and 16 of them attended the playoffs. What will happen if all 30 teams have to finish an 82-game regular season in a bubble (or multiple ones)?

Virtual fans on the screen for Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat at at AdventHealth in Orlando, Florida, October 4, 2020. /VCG

The trouble is not over. The NBA wants to bring fans back to the games as much as fans want to do the same. If the new season will take place in a bubble, the league will have to get creative in figuring out how to allow fans in while ensuring the bubble's safety.

The MLB may offer the NBA an example to follow as the baseball league put several straight games in one place to slim down teams' time on the road and speed up the season. The NBA must watch out for two things if it wants to introduce that mechanism: first, read carefully the traveling restrictions of the Canadian government for the sake of the Toronto Raptors; second, determine the length of the season (the MLB cut it from 162 games to 60).

Marcus Smart #7, Harrison Barnes #8 and Jaylen Brown #9 of Team USA leave the court after their 89-79 loss against Team France in the quarterfinals of the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Dongguan, south China's Guangdong Province, September 11, 2019. /VCG

There's also the problem with the Tokyo Olympics, which has already been postponed to July 2021. Basically, it's impossible for the NBA to finish the whole season before that and even if it somehow does it, one can't expect the best players to join the national team for Tokyo right after an exhausting competition. Either way, it seems unlikely for Team USA to get vengeance for their painful failure at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in China in 2019 this time.

The 2020 NBA Draft, like the beginning of the new season, was also postponed (to November 18). After that, the free agency market will open, followed by the training camps and then the 2020-21 season.