NBA commissioner Adam Silver says he doesn't expect next season to start until January, with some of the league's players potentially set to miss out on the Tokyo Olympics as a result.
The NBA season usually runs from late October to mid-June, but the current season was delayed for several months amid the coronavirus pandemic, and is set to finish in October.
The league hopes to launch a standard 82-game campaign in January followed by playoffs, which barring a condensed schedule, would still be running when the Olympics open on July 23.
"The more I am learning ... I continue to believe that we are going to be better off getting into January," Silver told CNN. "And further, the goal would be to play games in home arenas in front of fans."
"There are a lot of great US players, and we may be up against a scenario where the top 15 NBA players aren't competing in the Olympics, but other great American players are competing.
"Obviously, there are many NBA players who participate in the Olympics from other countries. That's something we're going to have to work through.
"These are highly unique and unusual circumstances. I think, just as it is for the Olympic movement, it is for us as well. We're just going to have to sort of find a way to meld and mesh those two competing considerations."
The Tokyo Olympics were postponed by a year because of the coronavirus outbreak. NBA players have participated in every Summer Olympics since the 1992 Barcelona Games.
The NBA, which halted its 2019-20 season in March, resumed play on July 30 in a bubble-like campus at Disney World in Florida without spectators.
"It is a factor in our planning," Silver said of the Olympics. "It would be tough for us to make a decision in January based on the Olympics happening on schedule when that's so unclear."