The NBA announced this Friday the calendar of the first half of the 2020-21 league with the opening game that the Brooklyn Nets and Golden State Warriors will play on December 22.
As the NBA had already announced, only the first half of the 72 games of the reduced season was closed to have the capacity to make adjustments in the event of cases of covid-19 between the players and have to postpone some when not having the security of when they competed in the Orlando bubble.
The Nets, who will have the debut of star forward Kevin Durant, will also be protagonists, as will the Los Angeles Clippers in the duels that they will star against the Lakers, the current NBA champions, before March 4, which is when The first half concludes with the six-day rest of the Weekend of the Stars, which will not be played.
Before the end of the first half, the league will have already established the schedule for the second to make it known.
Outside of the nationally televised games in the first three days of the calendar (Dec. 22, 23, and 25), some other important ones include Durant and the Nets who will travel to Golden State on February 13, where the star forward will play for the first time since he left the Warriors in 2018.
The Houston Rockets will have two meetings with the Washington Wizards, teams that on Tuesday carried out the transfer of point guards Russell Westbrook and John Wall.
The Wizards will travel to Houston to play the Rockets on January 26 and the Texan team will return the visit on February 15.
Two days later, the Rockets will have another interesting meeting, as they will travel to Philadelphia to face the Sixers, which is now their former general manager Daryl Morey, as the new president of operations, after leaving Houston with the argument that he was leaving. to dedicate to his family.
The guard Jrue Holiday will also make his first return to New Orleans, on January 29, when the Bucks face the Pelicans, with whom he played until last season.
The now traditional holiday of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the date par excellence for the NBA, will have the duels between the Phoenix Suns, with their new point guard Chris Paul, against the Memphis Grizzlies and the new talent of Ja Morant; the Nets will host the Bucks and the Lakers the Warriors.
Later that week, the Lakers will travel to the Bucks with center Anthony Davis and Greek power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo as stars.
On February 7, the date on which the National Football League (NFL) Super Bowl is scheduled, the NBA will also play five games.
Then, on February 20, the rematch of the last NBA Finals will take place when the Lakers host the Miami Heat at the Staples Center.
During the first half of the season, the 30 NBA teams will play 37 or 38 games, including between 17 and 20 from home. Of a total of 1,080 that will be played during this regular season, 558 have been scheduled so far.
In another attempt to fight the virus, the league has introduced the use of a baseball-like series schedule, with teams playing two games in a row in the same city.
Those matchups include only teams that play in the same conference and will play an average of four of these series in the first half of the schedule, two at home and two away from home.
Teams also play more back-to-back road trips against opponents in the same general geographic area than in the past, and the league says there are about half of those taking single-game road trips.
However, the league will still have its regular 30 games for each team against opponents from the opposing conference (on and away against all 15 teams).
It is expected that the second half of the calendar will include duels between the Boston Celtics against the Charlotte Hornets, where forward Gordon Hayward arrived, and the Sixers, with Doc Rivers as a new coach, against his former Clippers team.
