After a months-long pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA will finally return on July 31. The league will have an isolated campus at Disney World where 22 teams will compete for 16 playoff spots, before beginning the playoffs per usual.
The NBA decided to include the 16 teams currently in a playoff position, five teams competing for the 8th seed in the Western Conference, and the Washington Wizards, who are technically still in the playoff race but they’re not going to get close. The wrinkle to this idea is that when the regular season ends after eight “seeding games,” the 8th- and 9th-seeded teams will have a play-in game, insofar as the 9th-seed is fewer than four games back in the…
