NBA to release 2011-12 regular season schedule on Tuesday: Basketball News
Despite of the lockout, National Basketball Association (NBA) has decided to announce the schedule for the next season on Tuesday afternoon at 2:00 pm. This announcement was made on Sunday. According to various reports, as per
NBA’s upcoming schedule, the regular-season will begin from November 1, 2011.
The schedule announcement by NBA however will be low in scope, as the league has declined to make use of the names and images of the players.
Many analysts are seeing this as a routine exercise by the league as there is a high probability that the schedule will get affected by the lockout. The player’s union and franchise owners are still far apart and making an accord
over new Collective Bargaining Agreement by 1st November seems highly improbable.
The sluggishness of the negotiation process can be judged from the fact that it has been more than two weeks since the lockout was imposed and still, the two sides have not even decided when the next session of the talks will take
place. In the meantime, the owners have taken taking steps towards cutting operating cosy by sacking their office employees, while the players have been seeking contracts from international clubs in order to play overseas
All of this enough evidence that even if the lockout does not eliminate the entire 2011-12 regular-season, it might reduce it to less than 82 games, most probably to half.
In the previous lockout that took place back in 1998, the regular-season was also reduced to just 50 games. The TV ratings and the ticket sales remained low that year as the league failed to attract the fans after the episode.
However, only the time will tell how things will shape-up in the future. As for now it has been learnt that the runners up of the 2011 NBA Finals and the Eastern Conference Champions, Miami Heat will kick off the season on the
road against the New York Knicks.
Besides this, the Heat also has a game scheduled against their nemesis from the 2011 Finals, the Dallas Mavericks on Christmas. The game will be played in Dallas.
With the Heat opening their season against the Knicks, the 2011 champions Dallas will start their run against the Chicago Bulls; however, this schedule is tentative.
In the previous season, NBA announced their scheduled two weeks later than the original date and that was also released in two parts because they were waiting for some free agents to settle down before they confirm things. However,
this season there will be no movements in the roster due to the lockout.
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