The NBA’s bubble league appears set to occur in Orlando at the end of this month, with 22 teams heading to Disney with the hopes of determining a champion amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For the league’s remaining eight teams, though, the possibility of a potentially nine month-long layoff doesn’t seem all that appealing, and reports have indicated that the league is looking into ways to keep those from squads from getting too rusty.
According to Jackie MacMullan of ESPN, the NBA is closing in on a plan to get those teams on the floor in an environment similar to what it’s doing in Orlando. MacMullan, with a little help from the Twitter account of Adrian Wojnarowski, reports that the league is zeroing in on a plan that would send those squads to Chicago in September for a “mini-training camp.”
The NBA is closing in on signing off on a second “bubble” in Chicago for the eight teams that were not invited to play in Orlando, enabling mini-training camps and subsequent games against other clubs with a target date of September, sources tell ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 2, 2020
The eight teams that would make up this bubble league, assuming this comes to fruition and they all opt to go to Chicago, are the Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, and New York Knicks from the Eastern Conference, and the Golden State Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves from the Western Conference. There is obviously a long way to go between now and September, and it might not make sense for all of these teams to agree to this arrangement — the Warriors, one could argue, would benefit from a gigantic layoff heading into next season due to the injuries their stars suffered this season and the sheer number of games they played during their five consecutive trips to the NBA Finals.
Source: https://uproxx.com/dimemag/report-nba-bubble-league-non-playoff-teams-chicago/