The NBA sent a memo to teams detailing policies on resting during the 20-21 season. Teams will be granted significant flexibility to teams resting their players in non-nationally televised games, especially at the start of the season.

The memo presents possible examples including, "to rest a key veteran player who played a substantial role on a team that advanced deep into the 2020 Playoffs, or to rest a player who is still returning to full strength after recovering from COVID-19."

The memo also says that qualifying factors to determine whether players fall under those "unusual circumstances" includes a player's age, injury history, COVID-19 recovery, season and career workload and schedule issues, including how many games a team has recently played and how many consecutive road games they've played.

The league's memo reinforces the rules around nationally televised games that have been in place for multiple seasons now, stating that "teams are prohibited from resting healthy players for any "high-profile, nationally-televised game." It states that any team that chooses to do this anyway will be fined at least $100,000.