Friday was a major step in the right direction for the NBA as the league looks to resume the 2019-20 season at the end of the month in Florida at Disney World. Each team’s slate of seeding games was announced, and the Brooklyn Nets start things off against the Orlando Magic — who they will face twice during this eight-game span.
Brooklyn will also play the Washington Wizards, Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers before any potential play-in games and the 2020 NBA Playoffs.
And it appears the Nets’ schedule is among the easiest of the 22.
Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press illustrated his metric for strength of schedule by using the Miami Heat’s slate of games as an example:
Miami would have had the easiest schedule in the NBA down the stretch.
The Heat now have the fourth-hardest schedule in the seeding games — when taking into account only the 22 teams remaining this season. Records against the other eight not included.
Using his same analytics, the Nets’ strength of schedule was ranked 19 (fourth easiest).
Jacob Goldstein of Wins Added didn’t break his process down quite like Reynolds, but the data scientist came to a similar conclusion. Goldstein has Brooklyn’s strength of schedule ranked No. 17 (sixth easiest).
Strength of schedule for the NBA restart: pic.twitter.com/uha6fDWNF4
— Jacob Goldstein (@JacobEGoldstein) June 26, 2020
According to John Hollinger of The Athletic — who used a more in-depth, point-based system to determine strength of schedule — the Nets and the Pacers’ schedules are of similar difficulty, tied for third-easiest in the East and fourth-easiest overall (also tied with Sacramento).