9:03 PM ET Houston Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni was like everyone else in the NBA whose world was rocked by the abrupt halt to the season on March 11 due to the coronavirus pandemic. He cycled through emotions of shock, frustration, acceptance, then adjustment to the “new normal” as he prepared for a potential resumption
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5:58 PM ET As the NBA and NBPA are finalizing terms on a return-to-play plan Wednesday, there’s a faction of players discussing as a group whether restarting the season in the Orlando bubble is a good idea, sources said. Several dozen players participated in a conference call in the past 24 hours to discuss it,
7:29 AM ET NBA Insiders Who are the favorites in the new NBA playoff races, and which team will win it all? The NBA is planning to restart with 22 teams in Orlando on July 31, featuring an eight-game regular season, a potential play-in series for the No. 8 seeds and then the playoffs. A
2:21 PM ET Tim BontempsESPN Atlanta Hawks general manager Travis Schlenk said Tuesday morning that the NBA has told the league’s general managers that the 2020-21 NBA schedule could be more condensed in order to allow the league to remain as close as possible to its current schedule format. “Because of this circumstance, I think
7:00 AM ET ESPN national recruiting director Paul Biancardi scouted LeBron James in the early 2000s, back when Biancardi was a college assistant at Ohio State and LeBron was a high school sophomore. Biancardi has more recently had several opportunities to scout James’ son, Bronny James, who is about to enter his sophomore season at
7:31 AM ET With the NBA schedule determined for the coming months, the league’s annual coaching carousel is once again firing up. The New York Knicks are reportedly ready to begin the process of finding their next head coach. Other teams that held off because of the optics of handing out a pink slip during
12:55 PM ET Charlotte Hornets guard Malik Monk has been reinstated following his suspension for violating the NBA’s anti-drug program. Monk’s suspension began Feb. 26 and was set to continue until he was determined to be in full compliance with the program. “That’s been a while now,” Hornets general manager Mitch Kupchak said Monday of
3:24 PM ET San Antonio Spurs forward LaMarcus Aldridge will miss the remainder of the NBA season after having surgery on his right shoulder, the team announced Monday. The procedure was performed on April 24. Aldridge initially injured the shoulder during a game against Utah on Feb. 21. He played in the Spurs’ next game,
7:22 AM ET The NBA is back. Last week, the league’s board of governors and the players’ union both approved plans — a 22-team, 8-game wrap-up to the regular season followed by a possible play-in tournament for the eighth seed and playoffs — to resume the 2019-20 season on July 31 inside Walt Disney World’s
9:36 PM ET Marc J. Spears Kevin Durant told ESPN’s The Undefeated on Friday that he will not debut for the Brooklyn Nets during the 2019-20 NBA season after it resumes next month. Durant has not played since he tore his Achilles tendon on June 11 during Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals while
5:33 PM ET Associated Press MIAMI — The NBA plans to go to Disney World next month to finish the season, with a schedule calling for the 22 remaining teams to play more than 150 more games and for the league to eventually crown a champion. Coaches are seeing potentially a bigger purpose as well.
8:08 PM ET The NBA is working on the mechanisms that will be used to replace participants in this season’s resumption in the event of positive coronavirus tests or serious injuries in the Orlando bubble environment. Sources told ESPN that the league and teams are already discussing how teams will be able to utilize players
1:02 PM ET San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said the “country is in trouble” and he’s “embarrassed as a white person” to know that George Floyd could die in such a horrific way as a police officer with a knee on Floyd’s neck went about his job in such a “nonchalant … casual” manner.
5:31 PM ET Tim BontempsESPN As the NBA continues to prepare for its return to the court next month in Orlando, it has determined that the order in the standings will be determined by winning percentage, league sources told ESPN. That decision could play a pivotal role in how the race to take part in
6:22 AM ET NBA Insiders The NBA board of governors voted in favor of a 22-team return-to-play proposal on Thursday and the NBPA gave its approval on Friday, setting the resumption of the season in motion. The season will conclude with eight regular-season games per team in Orlando, Florida, with the possibility of a playoff
11:52 PM ET Fearful of significant setbacks in the development of young players over months of inactivity, several teams left out of this season’s regular-season resumption in Orlando have proposed ideas for regional mini-summer leagues, training camps and OTA’s, sources tell ESPN. As the rest of the NBA prepares to re-start the 2019-2020 season with
5:22 PM ET National Basketball Players Association representatives approved the NBA’s 22-team format to complete the 2019-2020 season, the NBPA announced Friday. The NBA and NBPA will work through a number of details in the next week on the season’s resumption at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, but sides are ready to move
10:30 AM ET It has been nearly three months since the last NBA game was played. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and man, there’s a lot to love about every team that’s going to compete for the 2020 NBA championship in Orlando next month. Now that the league’s board of governors has
6:54 PM ET AS THE NBA’S plans to restart its season at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Florida, were coming into focus last week, Chris Paul and Bob Iger went for a walk. Paul, the president of the National Basketball Players Association, and Iger, the executive chairman of the Walt Disney
3:40 PM ET Tim Bontemps Brian Windhorst Close ESPN Senior Writer ESPN.com NBA writer since 2010 Covered Cleveland Cavs for seven years Author of two books The NBA has announced its return 86 days after suspending the season due to the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, the NBA’s board of governors overwhelmingly approved a proposal for
12:31 AM ET Just days away from Thursday’s vote of the NBA board of governors to approve a plan to restart the season with 22 teams in Orlando, Florida, several of the franchises considered to be title favorites are internally discussing how to retain some semblance of the home-court advantage they fought to earn through
5:58 PM ET Golden State Warriors stars Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were among several members of the organization who marched in Wednesday afternoon’s Walking in Unity protest event in Oakland, California. As the Warriors noted in several social media posts, Golden State swingman Juan Toscano-Anderson organized the rally that went around Lake Merritt, the
11:51 AM ET The NBA’s Board of Governors has a 12:30 p.m. ET call on Thursday with the intention of approving the league’s plan for a 22-team return in Orlando, sources told ESPN on Wednesday. Each of the 22 teams will play eight regular-season games in Orlando for seeding purposes for the playoffs, sources told
6:45 AM ET THE NATIONAL BASKETBALL PLAYERS ASSOCIATION knew it needed to step in and help. As the NBA has become more international in recent decades, its ranks have grown in kind. About a quarter of players on opening night rosters — 108 of 450 — hail from 38 countries and territories other than the
5:32 PM ET As the NBA models a 22-team format for the season’s proposed resumption beginning July 31 in Orlando, a timeline shared with teams as a last possible date for a Finals Game 7 lands on Oct. 12, sources told ESPN. Commissioner Adam Silver is expected to have a proposal to take to a
Wes Unseld, who died Tuesday at the age of 74, spent more than three decades in the NBA as a player, coach and executive. He helped lead the then-Washington Bullets to their only NBA championship in 1978, earning Finals MVP honors. He, along with Wilt Chamberlain, is one of two players to win the league’s
6:55 AM ET The NBA’s return-to-play plan, which includes a likely 22-team field competing in Orlando, Florida, in regular-season games and a play-in tournament to decide postseason berths, is expected to pass in a Thursday board of governors vote. The Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic were holding the No. 8 seeds in their respective conferences
8:48 PM ET NBA Insiders Who are the favorites for MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year and the other major NBA awards for the 2019-20 season? The league is expected to approve a return-to-play plan on Thursday, with growing support for a 22-team field that likely will play regular-season and play-in
1:30 PM ET Near the end of the NBA’s board of governors call on Friday, Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett delivered an impassioned soliloquy on why the league and owners needed to consider the competitive and financial plights of smaller-market teams that could be left out of the season’s summer resumption in Orlando, Florida
7:25 AM ET When speaking with players, coaches, executives, referees and even typically skeptical agents in recent weeks, their display of support for Adam Silver reveals a remarkable building of capital in his six years as NBA commissioner. Under his leadership, the league and its partners have gotten richer. Silver has expanded support of players