NBA Announces Schedule for Next Month's Restart
After three and a half months without NBA action, merely a lot of talk and contemplation about how (and if) the season would be able to restart, things finally came to fruition on Friday. The league and the NBPA announced that the sides had hammered out a complete agreement about the return to play at the Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World in Orlando. We know the eight seeding games that each of the 22 teams remaining will begin on July 30 and end on August 13, setting things up for the postseason. Those games were culled from the remaining games that each team had on their schedule, thereby allowing for some interconference tilts that may have otherwise gone missing in action.
On Friday, we learned who each team would face when things get back to action as the league released the remaining schedule for each team in the compressed stretch run to the postseason. The league will get back to action with a solid doubleheader between Western Conference teams on July 30. Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell and the Jazz, who were at the epicenter of the league’s pause when Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 before Utah’s game with the Thunder in Oklahoma City back in March, will battle with Zion Williamson and the Pelicans in the opener. The second half of the doubleheader is the battle of the City of Angels when LeBron James, Anthony Davis and the Lakers do battle with Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and the Clippers.
According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, there will be no more than seven games on any given day of the schedule. In addition, games will be played on three courts, with two of them being prepped for national television coverage, be it by TNT, ESPN, NBA TV or ABC. Tip-offs for contests will range anywhere from noon to 9 pm ET depending on the day and the contest.
Of course, as would be the case at any point in the schedule, there are going to be some discrepancies in the difficulty of the closing stretch for each team. That could lead to some people thinking that there is some sort of conspiracy by the league to try and alter the way the postseason field inevitably turns out. Of course, there are still those who believe that the 1985 NBA Draft lottery was rigged in order to send Patrick Ewing to the Knicks with the number one overall pick in order to set up a more lucrative new TV deal with CBS.
As it stands, New Orleans, with the #1 overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, Zion Williamson, stands tied for ninth in the Western Conference, 3.5 games behind Memphis for the final playoff spot. The Pelicans play the easiest schedule in the eight-game seeding games schedule as their opponents have a collective winning percentage of .495 at this point. Meanwhile, Memphis has the sixth-hardest slate in Orlando as they face Utah, Oklahoma City, Toronto and Boston, helping their opponents boast a .597 winning percentage. That could lead to more conspiracy theorists angling that the league is trying to help the Pelicans make the postseason. Portland, who is tied with New Orleans for ninth, plays the fifth-toughest schedule remaining with a .600 opponent’s win percentage. Meanwhile, Sacramento, one of the other teams chasing the final playoff spot, has the third-easiest slate with a .529 opposing win percentage.
As it stands, the toughest four slates for teams are evenly split among the conferences. Toronto has the roughest schedule left with their opponents combining for a .638 winning percentage. Miami is right behind at .636 while the Lakers (.625) and Nuggets (.618) are next in line. Other than the Pelicans and Kings, the 76ers (.506), Nets (.544), Celtics (.550) and Clippers (.550) have the easiest remaining schedules by opposing win percentage.
It’s going to be an interesting stretch run for the league as they try to get to the postseason in order to crown a champion. Will one of the teams on the outside of the current playoff field find a way to claw their way to the postseason? How will players adjust to not playing for nearly four months? Those questions remain to be answered but we do know this: the plan for the NBA to return is real and ready to go. How things unfold from there, we’ll find out.