Maine Red Claws likely to sit out G League season
File Photo / Peter Van Allen
The Maine Red Claws, here in action at the Portland Expo, are not on the schedule to play the shortened G League season in Florida.
The state’s professional basketball team, the Maine Red Claws, is likely to sit out the rescheduled 2021 season of the NBA’s development organization, known as the G League.
While the Red Claws and their NBA parent franchise, the Boston Celtics, haven’t announced plans, the Maine club is not one of 18 G League squads scheduled to begin play Feb. 8, according to the Athletic, a sports website.
No reason for the omission was given, and the Celtics did not respond to an inquiry from Mainebiz. In addition to the Red Claws, whose home court is at the Portland Expo, 10 other G League teams are absent from the schedule.
The league is expected to play a schedule of up to 15 games in a protected “bubble” at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla., the Athletic reported Tuesday night. Teams will arrive at Disney Jan. 26 and will face off in playoffs from March 5-9.
The G League usually plays a 50-game schedule from November to March. In this year’s shortened season, each participating team will pay $400,000 to $500,000 to cover health and safety expenses, the Athletic said.
The Red Claws, who since their launch in 2009 had been an affiliate of the Celtics, were acquired by Boston in October 2019. Last month, the Celtics head office announced that both teams would don jerseys with the logo of a new corporate sponsor, the Dutch company Vistaprint, in a deal estimated to be worth several million dollars.
At the time, the NBA was working out a modified schedule for its own 2020-2021 season. But a Celtics spokesman told Mainebiz there was no then decision about whether the G League would play or the Red Claws would participate.
The NBA played its 2019-2020 season on the Disney campus from July to October this year, without any known cases of COVID-19 infection arising from the games.
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