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What NBA Season is this? | Timeline of NBA Season

The National Basketball Association has been around for a very long time. While it wasn’t always called the NBA fans would be surprised to know that the NBA has never canceled an entire season since 1946.

So what season is the NBA in exactly? The 2021/22 NBA season will mark the 76th season or year of the league’s existence. The league was founded in 1946 and was called the Basketball Association of America (BAA). The BAA merged with National Basketball League (NBL) and changed its name to the NBA. 

Think about it there have been 75 different teams since 1946 that have won an NBA championship. The NBA has been around a long time even though it doesn’t feel that long for some.

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When does the NBA season start and end?

The NBA season starts every year in the fall in the month of October. The pre-season starts a few weeks prior to the regular season in order to get the players ready after a long summer layoff.

Due to the pandemic, the season has seen different start dates and has been delayed for the safety of the players and coaches.

The end of a season without any postponements would end around April, but this does not include the playoffs.

When Do the Playoffs start and End?

The NBA playoffs are an exciting time when it comes to watching basketball. Many fans will miss the NBA season and pick up watching the NBA in the post-season.

The playoffs begin in the middle of April and ends in early June. The NBA uses generally the same schedule each year, as long as there are no interruptions such as a pandemic.

NBA timeline of a Season from start to finish

Let’s take a look at the timeline of NBA season from start to finish.

July/August – NBA Summer League

September/October – Pre-season

October – Start of Regular Season

February – NBA All-star Game

March – Trade Deadline

April – End of Season, Start of the Playoffs

May/June – NBA Finals

June/July – NBA Draft

Repeat…Next Season

How many games are left in the NBA season?

A question a lot of NBA fans ask is how many games are left till the playoffs.

An easy way to know without having to look at the standings is to take the timeline above and break down the number of games around each month.

Typically a team will play 7 to 16 games in a given month for 6 months straight from October to April.

With the season beginning from mid to late October and ending at the beginning of early to mid-April, we can count this as one month total.

October – Regular Season

February – NBA All-star Game

March – Trade Deadline

April – End of Season, Start of the Playoffs

If we average out the number of games per month t0 14 this gives us the following number of games per month.

October – 5 to 10 games

November – 20 to 25 games 

December – 35 -40 games

January – 45 to 50 games

February – 55 to 60 games – All-Star break

March – 70 to 75 games

April – 82 games completed

As you can see by Christmas it’s around 40 games already played by a team. By the time the All-Star Weekend begins it’s around 50games.

Keep in mind these are just estimates and can fluctuate based on a team’s schedule.

Did the NBA season always consist of 82 games?

Throughout history for the most part the NBA has stuck with an 82 game season through its existence.

Only in the first 10 or so years of the league, the NBA season consisted of only 8 to 17 teams and still, the league implemented a large number of games from 60 to 72 games.

The first 80 games season was in 1962 with only 9 teams in the league. That meant a team would play another team 8 to 10times a season.

While the players in today’s NBA complain about the league being too long and players even applying load management, the number of games played has never changed.

More and more players are getting injured not because of the 82 game season, but because of years of playing without taking time off.

From all the years of playing AAU and College basketball, a pro player cannot afford to take any days off for fear of the competition catching up and that player is left behind in terms of performance.

What is the best start to an NBA season for a team?

In the 1971/72 season, the Los Angeles Lakers led by Jerry West won 33 straight games to start the season.

The team would end up finishing the 82 game season with 69 wins and 13 losses. This was at the time the best record in league history for any team.

Also on that team were Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and Pat Riley, yes! the former coach and now GM of the Heat.

The NBA record for the number of wins in a season has since been broken twice, first by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1995/96 season where they won 72 games and lost 10.

Then in 2015/16 that record was broken again by Kevin Durant and StephCurry and the Golden State Warriors with a staggering 73 wins and 9 losses.