On Thursday, the NBA’s Board of Governors is expected to approve Commissioner Adam Silver’s proposal to have 22 of the league’s teams relocated to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. There, the league is expected to resume competition on July 31 and wrap up its season with the 2020 NBA Finals ending by early October.
Before the postseason begins, however, eight of the 22 teams invited to Orlando will play eight regular-season games. Although the dates of the games aren’t yet known, the scheduling of opponents will be done in a very simple way.
In effect, to determine each team’s eight opponents, the league will simply resume the 2019-20 schedule as of March 11 — the day the league suspended operations.
If a team is scheduled to play one of the eight teams not invited to Orlando, that game will simply be skipped. As it relates specifically to the Thunder, that means that its eight opponents, in order, will be:
- Utah Jazz
- Washington Wizards
- Memphis Grizzlies
- Denver Nuggets
- Miami Heat
- Denver Nuggets
- Phoenix Suns
- Los Angeles Clippers
In order to generate and preserve revenue, the league needs as many games to be televised as possible. While some believe that the games could be contested “NCAA style,” featuring multiple games being played at once, those final details are not yet known. The opponents are, though.
The Thunder will resume their season with a 40-24 record. They will own the Western Conference’s fifth seed by virtue of owning the tiebreaker over the Houston Rockets, who have the same record. The Thunder and Rockets trail the fourth-seeded Utah Jazz by just one game in the standings.
While there is no such thing as “homecourt advantage” in the NBA’s campus in Orlando, seeds and placement within the playoff bracket are still at stake. If the seeds held throughout the playoffs, the Thunder’s route to the NBA Finals would go through the Nuggets, Clippers and Lakers.
That is quite likely to change since seeds will be up for grabs after the league resumes competition.