With the NBA getting ready to continue its season next week at Walt Disney World’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, analysts and former NBA stars Paul Pierce and Jalen Rose discussed the restart during a media call today.
- The NBA season will resume with games starting on Thursday, July 30 at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex.
- Pierce and Rose did not get into the idea of Walt Disney World as the host site for the NBA, but they were asked about how their coverage and analysis will be affected by not being able to be on the court with the players.
- “Most of the time we do it from studio anyway until the Playoffs,” Pierce said. “This is still familiar territory for us, being able to sit down with a lot of monitors, analyze and watch the games. It’s just different doing it from our homes. In some cases, Jalen will be in the studio a little more than me. This is nothing new for me or Jalen.”
- Pierce did go on to mention that it can become a little different as the season progresses. “Unless it continues this way in the Playoffs, the Finals, that is what I will miss most, if we don’t have the opportunity to be in that situation,” he said.
More on the NBA season at Walt Disney World:
- The 22 participating teams will be the eight teams in each conference with the highest current winning percentages and the six teams that are currently within six games of the eighth seed in either conference.
- Each participating team plays eight “seeding games,” as selected from its remaining regular-season matchups.
- At the conclusion of the seeding games, the seven teams in each conference with the highest combined winning percentages across regular-season games and seeding games will be the first through seventh seeds for the NBA Playoffs for that conference.
- The NBA’s standard playoff tiebreaker procedures will be used to break any ties on the basis of winning percentage.
- Once the 16-team playoff field is set, the NBA Playoffs will proceed in a traditional conference-based format with four rounds and best-of-seven series in each round.
- The 2020 NBA Finals will end no later than October 13.