DENVER, June 26, 2020 – The National Basketball Association and the National Basketball Players Association announced today that they have finalized a comprehensive plan for a July 30 restart to the 2019-20 season, which includes stringent health and safety protocols, a single-site campus at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida and the goal of taking collective action to combat systemic racism and promote social justice.
The NBA also released its complete game schedule and national television schedules for TNT, ESPN, ABC and NBA TV for the “seeding games,” which will be played July 30 – Aug. 14 to tip off the resumption of the 2019-20 season. The 22 teams participating in the season restart will play eight seeding games each at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Below is the Nuggets eight-game seeding schedule:
Each team will be designated as the home team in four seeding games and the visiting team in four seeding games. The tip-off time for each team’s last seeding game, scheduled to be played on Aug. 13 or 14, will be determined at a later date in order to provide the most compelling matchups to a national audience. As part of the restart, the NBA and its broadcast and technology partners are collaborating to enhance game telecasts and bring fans an immersive, interactive viewing experience.
The 88 seeding games, which were selected from the remaining 259 regular-season matchups, will count toward the final 2019-20 regular-season standings and regular-season statistics. In the first step of the selection process for the seeding games, the matchups were chosen chronologically, starting from March 11, except in these instances:
• A matchup featured a non-participating team
• A matchup resulted in either team in the matchup exceeding eight total games
• A matchup prevented any participating team from having eight feasible matchups
The second step in the selection process was matchup balancing. There were eight instances in which selecting matchups chronologically prevented a matchup that was scheduled to be played two more times in the remainder of the regular season from being included among the seeding games. In those cases, one instance of that matchup was added as a seeding game, and instances of repeat matchups as seeding games were removed where possible.
The seeding games will conclude on Aug. 14. If a play-in is required to determine the eighth playoff seed in either conference, it will take place on Aug. 15-16. The first round of the 2020 NBA Playoffs will begin on Aug. 17.
Altitude Sports & Entertainment will televise all eight Nuggets seeding games in high-definition and will also broadcast all games on Altitude Radio 92.5 FM/950 AM, the Nuggets Radio Network. For comprehensive and behind the scenes coverage, tune in to Nuggets 360 on Altitude TV and follow along at nuggets.com and @nuggets on Twitter. No games will be exclusive to national broadcasts during the seeding play.