A preview of what Heat’s schedule will look like and more details on 2020-21 NBA season
Details continue to trickle out on what the 2020-21 NBA season will look like.
On Tuesday night, the NBA released additional information regarding the structure and format for the upcoming season, which will include a play-in tournament to determine the teams that will fill the seventh and eighth playoff seeds in each conference.
The 72-game regular season will begin Dec. 22 amid the pandemic, with an opponent breakdown that looks like this for the Heat:
▪ The Heat will play three games against each Eastern Conference team (42 total games), with each pairing featuring either two home games and one road game or one home game and two road games. Within each team’s division, the league office randomly assigned which two opponents will be played twice at home and which two opponents will be played twice on the road.
Within its own Southeast Division, the Heat will face the Atlanta Hawks once on the road and twice at home, the Charlotte Hornets twice on the road and once at home, the Orlando Magic twice on the road and once at home, and the Washington Wizards once on the road and twice at home.
▪ All five teams from within a division will play all five teams from one other intraconference division twice at home, and all five teams from the remaining intraconference division twice on the road.
The five teams in the Heat’s division will face all five teams from the East’s Central division (Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks) twice at home and once on the road.
The five teams in the Heat’s division will play all five teams from the East’s Atlantic division (Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, Philadelphia 76ers, Toronto Raptors) twice on the road and once at home.
▪ Each team will play two games against each interconference opponent (30 total games per team), with each pairing featuring one home game and one road game. That means the Heat will play one road game and one home game against each Western Conference team.
The 2020-21 regular-season schedule will be released in two segments.
The schedule for the first half of the season will be released around the Dec. 1 start of training camp. The schedule for the second half of the season will be released toward the end of the first half of the schedule, and the second half schedule will include the remainder of each team’s 72 games not scheduled in the first half and any games postponed during the first half that can “reasonably be added” to the second half of the schedule.
The All-Star break is scheduled to take place March 5-10, between the first half and second half of the regular season. But the break will not include an All-Star Game.
In addition, a play-in tournament was approved on a one-year basis for the upcoming season. The tourney will take place after the regular season and before the first round of the playoffs, and it will include the teams with the seventh-highest through the tenth-highest winning percentages in each conference.
The teams with the seventh-highest and eighth-highest winning percentages in each conference will each have two opportunities to win one game to earn a playoff spot. The teams with the ninth-highest and tenth-highest winning percentages in each conference will each have to win two consecutive games to earn a playoff spot.
At the end of the regular season, the team with the seventh-highest winning percentage in each conference will host the team with the eighth-highest winning percentage in its conference in a play-in game. The winner of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 matchup in each conference will be the seventh seed in the playoffs for its conference.
The team with the ninth-highest winning percentage in each conference will host the team with the tenth-highest winning percentage in its conference in a play-in game. The loser of the No. 7 vs. No. 8 game will host the winner of the No. 9 vs. No. 10 game, and the winner of that game will be the eighth seed in the playoffs for its conference.
The season will not be played in a bubble. It will be played in home arenas, with some teams hoping to host fans when games begin.
As for the Heat, planning continues for what games will look like at AmericanAirlines Arena. The organization’s hope has always been to host some amount of fans for games this upcoming season, but a formal announcement or determination has not been made yet.
Here’s the tentative schedule for the 2020-21 season:
Dec. 11-19: Preseason games
Dec. 22-March 4: First half of regular season
March 5-10: All-Star break
March 11-May 16: Second half of regular season
May 18-21: Play-in tournament
May 22-July 22: NBA playoffs
This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 8:52 AM.
