The Holistic Hoops Experience & Bench Units 2021 Basketball Season Calendar

All the dates you need to know as we gear up for basketball to start again

The thing I love about basketball is that it is there for me.

Year in, year out. Mornings, evenings, middle-of-nights. Weekends, workdays where I can’t concentrate, bank holidays, Christmas days to the tune of ignoring my family.

Since the NBA re-started its 2019-20 season inside the Disney World Bubble (July 30th, 2020), I pretty much haven’t been in a situation where I haven’t had basketball available to watch. It’s been quite a run:

• July 30th 2020: NBA 2019-20 season resumes

• September 30th 2020: 7DAYS EuroCup 2020-21 season begins (my first year watching)

• October 1st 2020: Turkish Airlines EuroLeague 2020-21 season begins (my first year watching)

• October 11th 2020: NBA season ends

• October 31st 2020: BSR División de Honor begins (I think the German and French leagues had already started - don’t remember)

• December 22nd 2020: NBA 2020-21 season begins

• January 2021: Me and Ben discover NBA TopShot and invest some cash. It becomes a full-time occupation to the point where we’re trading basketball crypto while having no time to watch basketball

• February 2nd 2021: Basketball Champions League Playoffs begin (didn’t know what BCL was, but it was included in the package I bought from EuroSport)

• April 30th 2021: EuroCup season ends

• April 30th - May 2nd 2021: IWBF Champions Cup Weekend

• May 9th 2021: Basketball Champions League season ends

• May 30th 2021: EuroLeague season ends

• 4th - 6th June 2021: Copa del Rey

• 29th June - 5th July: FIBA Qualifying Tournaments

• July 21st 2021: NBA season ends

• July 25th - 8th August 2021: Olympic Basketball Tournament

• 8th - 17th August 2021: NBA Summer League

• 25th August - 5th September 2021: Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball Tournament

• 5th September - present: ???

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From 30th July 2020 to 17th August 2021, not a day went by where I wasn’t watching or following one form of basketball or another. Sure, I didn’t watch the Basketball Champions League games or NBA Summer League games with quite as keen of an eye as I watched the Copa del Rey or NBA Finals, but you get the point.

I went 384 days enveloped in sheer basketball goings-on, had an 8-day detox, and then briefly turned nocturnal for 12 days while I followed the Wheelchair Basketball at Tokyo 2020 to an extent where people actively stopped reading my thoughts.

I don’t know what the criteria for “hoops junkie” is, but I’d like to think I meet it. I started watching the EuroLeague because I wanted more basketball in my life. I soak it all in, alternating between taking in the intricate details and just blankly gazing at the screen like when my niece has roped me into watching cartoons.

As I sit and write this, I’ve got a BCL Qualifying Round game on in the background. The stream has no commentary, and has nobody to tell me anything about any of the players who play for either Salon Vilpas or U-BT Cluj-Napoca (those are real teams, honestly!)
I put these games on because I love watching basketball. James humours me on this front more than just about anybody, and even he would tell me at this point that there is no way he’s sitting down to watch two clubs he’d never heard of. He’s earned that right. He’s a Paralympian and deems his time to be worthy of watching his peers among the basketball elite. Also, he always just seems to genuinely have better stuff to do, and that makes me genuinely pleased for him.

Having no comparable accomplishments from my playing days, I have no grounds on which to be so selective. I like to think I’m taking in the most holistic hoops experience I can get from all the content that these various leagues are churning out.

Like I said, basketball is there for me. If it means I have to endure watching a truly gruesome injury in a EuroLeague preseason game that most people wouldn’t ever bother to peek at, then so be it.

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This has all been pretty self-indulgent up to here, but I promise that there is a point to this article.

As I mentioned above, I bought a EuroSport package so I could watch some EuroLeague games. Only at this point did I find out that the EuroLeague, EuroCup and Basketball Champions League were all separate entities that ran concurrently. It’s confusing as all hell, and I still don’t understand it now. I’ll cover the mechanics of it if I ever figure it out.

Anyway, the point is that, for fellow basketball nerds like me, these stretches where you’re waiting for the yearly churn to start up again can sometimes feel like they go on forever, and you’ll take anything you can get.

That’s where Bench Units comes in! 👀

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Bench Units rest-of-2021 Basketball Schedule

Here’s everything you need to know as we get ready for basketball to ramp up again! We’re only 10 days out!

There are far too many links associated with all of these things for me to post them in any kind of useful way, but I’ll do my best to respond in the comments if anyone wants anything specific.

• 25th September 2021: German Wheelchair Basketball 2021-22 season begins

• 30th September 2021: Turkish Airline EuroLeague 2021-22 season begins

• 2nd October 2021: French Wheelchair Basketball 2021-22 season begins

• 5th October 2021: Basketball Champions League 2021-22 season begins

• 9th October 2021: Spanish Wheelchair Basketball 2021-22 season begins

• 19th October 2021: NBA 2021-22 season begins

• 20th October 2021: 7DAYS EuroCup 2021-22 season begins

• 23rd October 2021: Italian Wheelchair Basketball 2021-22 season begins

• 2nd - 13th December 2021: IWBF European Championships

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Take in as much basketball as you can. If nothing else, it’ll make me feel like less of a lunatic.