It appears the NBA's Board of Governors will discuss their resumption plan on Friday, May 29 - and hopefully agree to a specific one. Let's say they agree to a 72 or 76 game regular season. As I've discussed on the A-Team (3-6pm weekday afternoons) several times, local television contracts are a consideration, since many are written with of a 70-game broadcasts to fulfill. (i.e. play the games, get the local tv revenue from the contract).

Facilities in home cities will be opened regardless - players can come to their teams' practice facilities regardless of if their team is resuming the season. The likely resumption plan includes sending teams to a single location in Orlando. Teams will practice and play games there and of course stay in hotels there. Teams will continue to be seeded 1 through 8 in each conference with no re-seeding.

Safety is a huge consideration, so it seems reasonable that teams who are not going to make the playoffs with a shortened regular season schedule could be told not to come back. That will result in 23 teams resuming the 2019-2020 regular season. Regular season games will be played against both eastern and western conference teams.

East Playoffs

Looking at the East, the top 10 teams have all played 64 or 65 games. With a 72 game schedule, only the Wizards (9th) and Hornets (10th) among the 9-15 seeds, would not be currently mathematically eliminated. The Bulls, Knicks, Pistons, Hawks and Cavaliers will not resume their seasons. That leaves ten teams to play 7 or 8 regular season games until they reach their 72 games played limit. The resulting standings would create a play-in scenario for the teams seeded 7 - 10.

East mini-playoffs (best-of-3):

7 seed vs 10 seed ; winner advances to the 8 team regular playoffs

8 seed vs 9 seed ; winner advances to the 8 team regular playoffs

The two winners are re-seeded, based on regular season record.

The remaining eastern conference playoffs would operate as they have for the last several seasons.

First round (best-of-5), conference semifinals (best-of-7), conference finals (best-of-7)

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