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00:00If the NBA season can be resumed, the NBA will play summer basketball for the first
00:05time, which has some people in the league wondering, should they be playing summer basketball
00:09full time?
00:10Joining me to talk about this from Fox Sports.
00:12First things first on FS one is Nick, right, Nick, what do you think?
00:17Summer basketball.
00:18If the NBA comes back, it will be a reality.
00:20Should the NBA consider changing the schedule radically to make it a full time reality?
00:25I don't think it's a necessity, but I think it's a smart idea.
00:29I think that the recognizing that the NFL has a monopoly on the fall and starting your
00:35season in the fall could be a bit of a fool's errand or is a bit of a fool's errand, I think
00:40is smart.
00:41With that said, I want to see exactly how the months play out, what the schedule would
00:47be, because I wouldn't want the season to end in the middle of August because free agency
00:54right now is the second most exciting part of the year for most people behind the playoffs.
01:01It probably goes playoffs, free agency, regular season.
01:05And what you don't want is NBA free agency being the beginning of September when everyone
01:10is focused on the NFL.
01:13So if you could make it to where the finals end instead of in the middle or beginning
01:18of June, the finals end at the end of July.
01:22We have a draft a week later and we have free agency starting August 15th.
01:27I think that would be perfect.
01:29I don't think the finals ending at the middle or tail end of August is a good idea at all.
01:35I think as long as you have like a two week window where the free agency can start the
01:42end of a seven game final series that is, as you point out, early to mid August, I think
01:47the scheduling of it works.
01:48I love the idea, Nick, and as I've been reporting on this in the last week or so, I'm struggling
01:55to find out why it isn't a good idea anyway or wasn't a good idea over the last few years.
02:00I mean, the NBA ratings have been up and down.
02:03They've been down for the most part this year.
02:05And the more people I talk to, the more people say it's more about the anecdotal evidence
02:10that people don't watch television in the summertime.
02:13You know, television networks wouldn't want to have the finals on in July and August because
02:18people wouldn't be watching.
02:19But there's really no data that suggests that's true.
02:22It's just anecdotal evidence that says as much.
02:24And when I talked to Mark Cuban about this, who has been a proponent of this idea, he
02:29says, look, Shark Tank ratings are up in the summertime.
02:31So people are staying at home and watching TV.
02:34I had a conversation with John Skipper, who works over at the zone, used to work for ESPN
02:38for a long time.
02:39He thinks it's a good idea that the NBA plays summertime basketball.
02:42So while this would be a good thing, of course, if the NBA season is ultimately shortened
02:47and picked up in June or July, I think it can provide some really valuable data points
02:53that will let the NBA explore whether just being the only game in town outside of baseball
02:58is good for their long-term health.