Each summer, when the NBA announces its schedule for the upcoming season, we can confidently say that two things will definitely happen:
- Scores of fans across this beautiful blue marble of ours will realize, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their favorite team is getting screwed, man—too few national TV opportunities, too little recovery time, too many games against tougher competition thanks to an unbalanced schedule (“BAN CONFERENCES, YOU HEATHENS!”), too much air travel, too many games playing on one day of rest against an opponent with two days of rest, etc.
- We will go through the calendar to circle some dates and games worth remembering on the slate ahead, because summertime in the NBA is nothing if not an exercise in giving ourselves something to look forward to.
While y’all go about checking the first box, let’s take a stab at the latter, highlighting some of the most anticipated games on the newly released 2019-20 NBA schedule, starting with … well, the start:
The Premier Premieres
Clippers at Lakers, October 22, 10:30 p.m. ET
With the exception of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving landing in Brooklyn, a move we’ll likely have to wait a year to see pay off in full, the biggest shifts in the NBA this summer happened in Los Angeles, with Anthony Davis finally securing a trade from the Pelicans to LeBron James’s Lakers, and Kawhi Leonard and Paul George teaming up on the Clippers. Which Staples Center tenant has the superior squad and which one has the best chance at winning it all next season both might be in the eye of the beholder, but getting a good look at how the reloaded Finals hopefuls stack up against each other promises to be one of the more exciting unveilings the league has to offer. Shouts to the NBA for deciding not to make us wait to find out what happens when its two preeminent new power couples collide. (My guess? Basically what happened when Little Pete turned on a humidifier and a dehumidifier at the same time.)
Pelicans at Raptors, October 22, 8 p.m. ET
Before Kawhi begins a new chapter with his new team, the one he led to the 2019 NBA title will receive its championship rings on opening night. (Thanks, it seems, to the gracious accommodation of Sir Elton John.) As rad as it will be to see Kyle Lowry, Marc Gasol, Serge Ibaka, and Co. hoist Toronto’s first NBA banner, though, the feature attraction will be the regular-season debut of wunderkind Zion Williamson, who will become the first no. 1 draft pick to play on opening night since Derrick Rose all the way back in 2008. Williamson’s first pro appearance, at Las Vegas summer league, was an absolute scene; we can only imagine how wild the atmosphere will be when the games actually count.
Pelicans at Grizzlies, January 20, 5 p.m. ET
The top two picks in the 2019 draft go head-to-head! I’m excited to watch Williamson get his feet wet at the next level on a Pelicans team that could be better than expected right out of the gate, thanks to the AD trade haul and a shrewdly navigated free agency period that saw new NOLA personnel boss David Griffin add veterans JJ Redick and Derrick Favors. But I’m just as intrigued by what’s brewing in Bluff City, where no. 2 overall selection Ja Morant is joining rising sophomore Jaren Jackson Jr. to form one of the league’s most talented young inside-out pairings. (And let us not forget about summer league MVP Brandon Clarke!) Morant skipped summer league after pre-draft surgery to remove a “loose body” in his right knee, while Williamson saw only nine minutes of action in Vegas after bruising his left knee, so this will mark the first of what will hopefully be many meetings between the electric freshmen and the up-and-coming Western Conference squads they’ll be tasked with leading.
The Return Engagements
Clippers at Raptors, December 11, 7 p.m. ET
Leonard’s first trip back to Scotiabank Arena since departing for the West Coast makes the list largely because I’m not really sure what kind of response to expect from the Toronto faithful. Will fans warmly cheer the Finals MVP for delivering them to the promised land in his lone season in Canada? Will they show him the cold shoulder? Or will it fall somewhere in the middle, a muffled roar in keeping with the mixed emotions many Raptors fans have felt following the soaring high of their championship win? Feelings can be complicated, messy, and more than one thing at the same time. This might be, too. (Also: It’s hard to draw up a better test of whether or not Pascal Siakam is ready to assume the mantle of Toronto’s no. 1 option than having him go up against the man who used to occupy that role.)
Nets at Celtics (7 p.m. ET) and Lakers at Pelicans (9:30 p.m. ET), November 27
The emotions here, I suspect, will be a little less complicated. (And the night before Thanksgiving, too!)
The loudest sound we hear all season might be the boos cascading down from the Smoothie King Center rafters in Davis’s direction. The former no. 1 overall pick made it clear in late January that he was done being a Pelican, thank you very much, and would like to leave New Orleans as soon as humanly possible—which is to say, a season and a half before he could exercise his player option. What followed was an uncomfortable uncoupling that all but scuttled the rest of the season for both the Pelicans and Lakers, capped by, of all things, a Merrie Melodies–tinged sartorial message. That was weird. (Also: Nice save, AD. Sharp stuff.)
Irving didn’t spend as long with the Celtics as Davis did in New Orleans; it only felt like seven seasons. Last season, Kyrie somehow managed to make the All-NBA second team and have a disappointing year, acting as the emotional weathervane of a Celtics side that underperformed (admittedly too lofty) expectations and flamed out in the second round of the postseason amid a hail of bricked Uncle Drew pull-ups. After a season marked mostly by frustrating failures to launch and curious commentary, by the end of the playoffs, all parties involved seemed ready for the end of the road. The imbalanced schedule will afford Celtics fans more chances to express, in their own unique and irrepressible fashion, just how much they appreciate what he wrought during his time in green.
The Pels now have Zion, who may become something in New Orleans that AD never could, plus a brand-new lease on life thanks to all those incoming draft picks. The Celtics have another All-NBA point guard, several players who’ll enter the season coming off an iron-sharpens-iron stint with Team USA, and maybe the benefit of some fresh air after moving on from the rancor of last season. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Before we can say it’s really “ended,” though, AD and Kyrie will have to face the music in their old stomping grounds. I might recommend some earplugs.
Rockets at Thunder, January 9, 9:30 p.m. ET
If those last two matchups skewed a bit cynical for your taste, this one ought to offer a worthy corrective. For all his peccadilloes and idiosyncrasies, and for the shortfalls in his game, Russell Westbrook was the Thunder for 11 years. He could be a complicated figure to root for, but he was, is, and will always be a superhero in Oklahoma City; as such, he’ll be greeted upon his return, even wearing Rockets red, with the hero’s welcome he deserves. That ought to be cool to watch.
Mavericks at Knicks, November 14, 8 p.m. ET
This will be the first time in 21 months that Kristaps Porzingis is introduced in a starting lineup at Madison Square Garden. It will be the first time he’s announced as a visitor. And man, I don’t know what the hell to expect when that happens.
Porzingis emerged as the lone source of hope on a dismal Knicks team, then skipped his 2016-17 season-ending exit interview to signal his frustration with ongoing organizational dysfunction under team president Phil Jackson. Jackson publicly rattled his saber about trading the Latvian big man, only to later get fired; Porzingis stuck around, made his first All-Star team, and then suffered the ACL tear that has sidelined him since February 2018.
He and his agent/brother expressed “concerns on the state of the [Knicks] franchise” before the 2019 trade deadline; within two hours, he’d been traded to Dallas, giving New York the salary cap space with which to land two max-level free agents and completely overhaul the franchise. It didn’t work out that way. Two months after the Knicks traded Porzingis, a woman told police that he had raped her; legal and league investigations into that matter are reportedly still ongoing. And last month, Porzingis signed a $158 million maximum-salaried contract extension to stay in Dallas for the next five years, pairing with Luka Doncic in a dynamic duo of the future, while the Knicks spent their cap space on a collection of young players and veterans on short contracts who might help the team return to respectability in the near term while maintaining financial flexibility for the future.
So much has happened over the past three years, and attitudes about Porzingis vary drastically depending on who you talk to. Does he get a “once a Knick, always a Knick” welcome as the first homegrown star of consequence that the franchise had produced in a generation, only to sour on a toxic environment within MSG? Or does he get jeered as a pariah whom management insists wanted to shoot his way out of town?
Gather Round the Yule Blog
Hmm? What’s that? Oh, you want a breakdown of the Christmas Day quintuple-header? Your Christmas-in-August wish is my command:
The Sneak Previews
I understand that it’s a bit early to be identifying games as potential conference finals previews. That said, it is a bit early for everything, and since we’re already here, we might as well get excited for the possibilities when some of the league’s most monstrous rosters collide:
Bucks at 76ers, December 25, 2:30 p.m. ET
Milwaukee and Philly enter the season as the clear class of the East; both FiveThirtyEight’s projection model and the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook’s over/under odds project them as the only 50-win teams in the conference. After the departures of Jimmy Butler and JJ Redick, the Sixers will look drastically different from the team that took the eventual-champion Raptors to seven games in the conference semifinals. But the new arrivals—All-Defensive-caliber wing Josh Richardson and do-everything big man Al Horford—could make Philadelphia even better equipped to defend and defang a Bucks attack that may need some time to retool after losing versatile guard Malcolm Brogdon. The 76ers and Bucks split a pair of regular-season classics last spring, with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Joel Embiid showing why they rank among the most unstoppable forces in the sport. More of that, please, with bragging rights and conference supremacy on the line.
76ers at Raptors, November 25, 7:30 p.m. ET
This one won’t have quite the same juice, with Leonard and Butler both in new homes. But I have a simple rule: When one team ends another team’s season on one of the greatest and most improbable shots in the history of the sport, I look forward to their next game with some relish. Let’s see Embiid try to be the one inducing the tears rather than crying them this time; let’s see Lowry, Siakam, and the rest of Toronto’s championship remnant try to prove that their competitive viability and repeat aspirations didn’t exit the building when Kawhi did.
Clippers at Rockets, November 13, 7:30 p.m. ET
Lakers at Rockets, January 18, 8:30 p.m. ET
For as much ink as we’ve spilled on the L.A. teams, it’s worth remembering that Houston returns seven of the top eight players from a team that won 53 games last season, and—considering age, health, and total productivity—may well have upgraded that eighth spot in the blockbuster that sent Chris Paul and a passel of draft picks to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook. There are a lot of questions when it comes to Westbrook’s fit in Houston, both offensively alongside James Harden and defensively alongside, um, everybody. But the Rockets could be the rare team that benefits from both continuity and an injection of new blood, with two of the league’s most irrepressible offensive stars teaming to give opposing defenses fits each night. It ought to be fascinating to see how Houston’s attack fares against a Clippers team with perhaps the best and deepest collection of perimeter defenders in the league. I’ve got a lot of time for a small-vs.-big, styles-make-fights affair pitting the bucket-getting of Harden and Westbrook against the bruising style of LeBron and AD, too.
Rockets at Jazz, January 27, 9 p.m. ET
Rockets at Nuggets, November 20, 9 p.m. ET
While highlighting Houston, I also found myself thinking about how two other would-be conference contenders will stack up against Harden, Westbrook, and Co. The Rockets have been Utah’s bête noire the past two postseasons, thanks to a spread pick-and-roll/big-man-hunting offense capable of breaking down the Jazz’s elite Rudy Gobert–led defense and a defensive strategy that has neutralized Donovan Mitchell and laid bare the lack of other top-flight playmakers and bankable shooting on Utah’s roster. After landing Mike Conley to team with Mitchell in the backcourt, and Bojan Bogdanovic to serve as a stretch 4 and secondary creator up front, does Utah finally have the firepower to be able to go toe-to-toe with Mike D’Antoni’s squad? And will the downgrade in 3-point accuracy from CP3 to Russ make it a bit easier for the Jazz to stifle a Houston offense that has bedeviled them?
It’s a similar story in Denver. The Nuggets ranked as one of the most pleasant surprises in the NBA last season, topping the 50-win mark for the first time in six seasons and making it out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time in a decade. But Nikola Jokic’s crew struggled mightily against the Rockets, going 1-3 against Houston during the regular season and hemorrhaging points to the tune of 124.5 per 100 possessions. With the remarkable Jokic leading the way and a collection of improving young talents orbiting him, Denver can score on anybody, and should be considered a threat to improve on last season’s conference semifinals run. To be a real championship contender, though, the Nuggets will have to improve at tamping down high-octane opponents who can spread them out and bomb away. (The addition of multipositional defender Jerami Grant should help; so would a full, healthy season from Gary Harris.)
Bucks at Rockets, October 24, 8 p.m. ET
Last season, Harden became only the fourth player in NBA history to average more than 36 points per game for full campaign, shattering our preconceptions about how much a single player could work in isolation while still fueling an elite offense. And all it earned him his third second-place finish in MVP balloting in the last five years, as more voters opted to recognize Antetokounmpo’s two-way brilliance than Harden’s historically rugged individualism. Maybe this one’s a Finals preview, and maybe it isn’t, but it sure does feel like there’s a pretty high chance we could see a “fuck you, I’m the MVP” game from Harden. Or Giannis. Or, for that matter, the other MVP who’ll be on the court.