The NBA regular season schedule for 2020-21 will be released in 2 stages, with a play-in tournament May 18-21

The NBA announced on Tuesday evening the structure and format for the 2020-21 season, including exactly how the upcoming schedule will be published.

The schedule will be released in two halves – what the league calls the first half and the second half. The schedule for the first half of the season, which runs from December 22 to March 4, will be released around the start of training camp, scheduled for December 1.

The league will not publish the schedule for the second half until later in the first half. This will include the remainder of each team’s 72 regular season games that were not previously scheduled, as well as any games that were carried over into the first half of the season that “can reasonably be added” to the rest of the schedule.

The All-Star break is scheduled to take place March 5-10, between the two halves.

The second half of the season will run from March 11 to May 16. The play-in tournament will take place May 18-21 before the start of the playoffs on May 22.

Each NBA team will face teams from its conference three times for a total of 42 games, while facing teams from the opposing conference twice each (30 games).

Within each team’s division, the league has already assigned which opponents will be played twice at home and which will be played twice on the road.

Each division within a conference will then face the five teams from another intra-conference division twice at home and the five teams from the remaining division twice on the road.

The league said its board of governors unanimously approved the play-in tournament proposal on a one-year basis in a vote on Thursday. The teams with the seventh and eighth highest winning percentages will have two chances of making the playoffs, while the teams with the ninth and tenth highest winning percentages will have one chance.

The “game of seven-eights” will feature teams ranked seventh and eighth, while the “game of nine-ten” will feature teams ranked ninth and tenth. The winner of the Seven-Eight game will advance to the playoffs. The loser will host the winner of the Nine-Ten Game, as previously reported.

The NBA Finals will run until July 22. With the Summer Olympics kicking off on July 23 – and the qualifying tournaments for the remaining four men’s places to run from June 29 to July 4 – this almost certainly eliminates a number of players from considering participating. at the Olympic games.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.