NBA Reportedly Considering Games in 'Regional Pods' for 2020-21 Season

The NBA created a campus at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, to house 22 teams and restart the 2019-20 season amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has already begun planning for the 2020-21 season as well.

With that in mind, regional pods for at least some portion of the next NBA campaign appear to be on the table, per ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

"NBA's priority remains to get fans into arenas next season," Wojnarowski tweeted Wednesday. "Regional pods for extended periods are among brainstorms, but preference would be that those are finite in length, sources said. For example: A month or two inside, a month out. Early in planning; everything's on table."

On Tuesday, National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts told ESPN's Tim Bontemps that the league may be forced to play in a de facto bubble again next year.

"If tomorrow looks like today, I don't know how we say we can do it differently," Roberts said.

A total of 61,498 new COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the United States on Tuesday, per the World Health Organization, bringing the country's total to over 4.26 million.

The league has not set an official start date for the 2020-21 season, although an NBA.com FAQ about the 2019-20 restart lists Dec. 1 as the day when the new campaign will "likely begin."

If that's the case, the league would need to be ready for an alternate plan of any kind. Per James Gallagher of BBC News, "most experts think a [coronavirus vaccine] is likely to become widely available by mid-2021."

The Disney World bubble appears to be working well so far, with none of the 344 players tested on campus having a confirmed case since July 20, per Allen Kim and Wayne Sterling of CNN.com.

However, the bubble is a temporary fix for a longer-term problem.

Eight of the league's teams weren't invited to Disney World due to their placement in the standings with the regular season winding down, and six teams will depart in mid-August after they are eliminated from playoff contention.

From there, the group of teams in Disney World will gradually be cut in half throughout the remainder of summer and beginning of fall as the playoffs progress.

In other words, the feasibility of the current bubble pales in comparison to holding 30 teams in one location for a far longer period of time. That brings regional pods into the equation, which are likely more doable.

Hypothetically, the NBA could group teams by division (or in five groups of six for even numbers) and have them play out their regular-season series to start the year to buy time.

The league could either house teams in one set location (a la the current Disney World bubble or something akin to the NHL holding all of its remaining games in Edmonton or Toronto) or break the teams down by region to restrict long-distance travel.

Ultimately, it doesn't appear that the NBA (or any other American sports league) will be ready to welcome fans back en masse any time soon as the pandemic continues its spread. But the current success of the Disney World bubble creates hope that the league will figure out a contingency plan for 2020-21.