ANOTHER National Basketball Association season, the 74th of its kind, is at hand.
On Sunday September 29, training camps open for all teams taking part in preseason games outside North America.
Asia is the favored destination for NBA preseason games. The Indiana Pacers and Sacramento Kings will lock horns in the NBA India Games on October 4 and 5 in Mumbai – a city familiar to the Kings’ India-born club owner Vivek Ranadive.
There will be two NBA Japan Games between the reigning league titlist Toronto Raptors and Houston Rockets, featuring a pair of one-time NBA Most Valuable Player awardees in James Harden (2018) and summer trade acquisition Russell Westbrook (2017), in Tokyo on October 8 and 10.
The Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets, revitalized by the addition of Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving, respectively, will battle each other in the NBA China Games on October 10 in Shanghai and October 12 in Shenzhen (a wonderful young city which I have been to twice in the past decade).
Then there’s the preseason contest between the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers on October 17 (October 18, Manila time) in Vancouver, Canada.
For all other teams that are staying home in America, training camps will open on October 1 (October 2, MT).
I can’t wait for the start of the NBA preseason games on September 30 (October 1, MT) with the Houston Rockets facing the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association at the Toyota Center.
Teams will play as few as five games instead of the old eight-game format that was discarded as a concession to the players union by the team owners under the current labor contract (collective bargaining agreement).
The exhibition schedule concludes on October 18 (October 19, MT).
The 2019-20 regular wars, consisting of 1,230 games, unwrap on October 22 (October 23, MT).
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Some NBA training camps open this weekend but the Memphis Grizzlies told summer trade acquisition Andre Iguodala last September 23 that the 6-6, 35-year-old forward-guard would be allowed to skip TC while the club continue to look for a trade partner for him.
The Grizzlies also agreed that Iguodala can continue his private workouts at a location of his choice during this time.
Iguodala will not play a single game for Memphis but will remain on its roster when the NBA’s 74th season commences on October 23, Manila time. That’s assuming a trade could not be consummated between now and the NBA trade deadline on February 6.
Iguodala, whom Memphis acquired from Golden State in a trade last July 7, will bankroll a guaranteed $17.2 million in the final year of his contract in 2019-20.
Memphis has refused to negotiate a contract buyout with Iggy until now. The LA Lakers are interested in Iguodala only if a buyout happens.
Iguodala was part of the Warriors’ super team that advanced to the NBA Finals for the past five years — only the second franchise to turn in the trick after the 1959-66 Boston Celtics’ NBA championship teams under my GOAT Bill Russell — and earned three title rings during the stretch.
Iguodala was the recipient of the Bill Russell hardware in 2015 as the NBA Finals MVP while coming off the pines for the Warriors in their 4-2 title-series win over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was the first ever Finals MVP (an award established only in 1969 and voted upon by a media panel) not to start a single game during the regular season and also the first Finals MVP not to start in every game of a championship series.
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The NBA has started to get tough following the passage of stricter penalties for tampering by team officials or players and circumvention of league rules in a unanimous vote by the NBA Board of Governors last September 20.
Today, the NBA fined the Milwaukee Bucks $50,000 for violating league rules that prohibit teams from discussing future player contracts.
The fine is in response to remarks made by Milwaukee general manager Jon Horst about a contract extension for Bucks meal ticket and the reigning league MVP Giannis Antetokuonmpo in a televised town hall meeting last September 12.
Horst, the 2019 NBA Executive of the Year awardee following the Bucks’ league-leading 60-22 regular-season performance, had said that the Suds City franchise intends to offer The Greek Freak a supermax five-year contract worth $253.8 million, the largest in NBA history, in July of 2020.
The current labor contract (or collective bargaining agreement) between the NBA and its players union states that team executives cannot commit to offer a player a supermax contact until he has played seven seasons.
Antetokuonmpo, an athletic 6-9 forward from Athens, has had only six years of NBA experience thus far.
Silence is golden. No talk, no mistake.
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