NBA won't play on Election Day

The National Basketball Association won’t host games on Election Day this year in an effort to increase voter turnout, the organization announced Tuesday.

The decision “came out of the NBA family’s focus on promoting nonpartisan civic engagement and encouraging fans to make a plan to vote during midterm elections,” NBA officials said in a tweet.

In the months before Election Day — which is on Tuesday, Nov. 8 — teams will distribute information about the voting process and registration in their respective states.

Games played the day before the elections will be used “to amplify the work of each team to promote civic engagement in their respective markets and share important voting resources from our partners,” the organization said.

"It’s unusual,” James Cadogan, executive director of the NBA’s Social Justice Coalition, told MSNBC in an interview Tuesday. “But voting and Election Day are obviously unique and incredibly important to our democracy.”

In 2020, the organization turned most of its arenas into polling locations, early voting sites and voting centers on Election Day.

The entire 2022-2023 schedule will be released Wednesday at 3 p.m.