With the NBA All-Star break in the rearview mirror, all teams around the league look to start the second half of the season as they compete for a chance to win the NBA Championship. The 2022–23 NBA season, which started in October 2022, will conclude this June.
The NBA has not had a regularly scheduled season since the 2018-19 season when they were last able to go from October to June. Since then, well, a global pandemic struck planet Earth and the league has been in recovery mode ever since.
The 2019/20 regular season was put on a hiatus in mid-March and was what seemed to be the first domino to fall that sent the world into complete lockdown. The NBA, along with its board members and the help of the NBPA, the National Basketball Players Association, was able to come up with a plan to resume play in July 2020.
Now, when resuming play in July of that year, only a few months before the following season was set to begin, the NBA began its route to being "off schedule" for a few seasons. Thus, it is finally returning to its normal calendar year schedule for the 2022–23 season.
With play now set to resume on the 23rd of February, the league is in one of the tightest playoff races it has been to date.
In the Eastern Conference, just four and a half games separate the bottom five seeds, allowing for an immense amount of room for wild changes before the regular season concludes in mid-April. In the Western Conference, it is even closer. Just four and a half games separate the third through 12th-placed teams. Each conference has 15 teams.
Now that the regular season is halfway over, all eyes are on the NBA’s new all-time leading scorer, Lebron James. James looks to win his fifth NBA Finals of his career and his second with the Los Angeles Lakers.
While the Lakers currently sit two games out of the final playoff spot, all fans and critics will be paying close attention to them as the season winds down, as an all-time great is nearing the end of his playing career.