After in-season tourney elimination, NBA adds Thunder, Nuggets to Rockets’ December schedule
When the Rockets lost at Dallas on Tuesday night, it eliminated Houston from the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament. Only eight teams out of 30 advanced to the 2023-24 quarterfinals stage.
But because in-season tournament matchups (with the exception of the championship) also count toward the 82-game regular season, those teams who did not advance are having games added to their schedules to ensure that all teams play the same amount of games.
To select those opponents, each team’s schedule additions were selected from a pool of teams meeting these two criteria:
Did not advance to the in-season tournament quarterfinals;
Same-conference teams that were not already scheduled for four regular-season meetings, i.e. the usual limit.
Teams from different conferences (Eastern and Western) were already scheduled for the NBA’s out-of-conference maximum of two regular-season matchups versus each potential opponent. Thus, all the new matchups feature teams from the same conference, where teams face their opponents either three or four times per season.
Unfortunately for the Rockets (8-7), that formula led to a challenging draw of a home matchup versus Oklahoma City (11-6) on Wednesday, Dec. 6 and a road game at Denver (12-6) on Friday, Dec. 8.
Tipoff of Rockets-Thunder at Toyota Center is at 7:00 p.m. Central, while Rockets-Nuggets tips at 8:00 p.m. Central from Denver.
Rockets get schedule additions that might be tougher than if they advanced in the in-season tournament. They will play the Thunder next Wednesday in Toyota Center. They then go back to Denver, where they play tomorrow, Dec. 8. Denver, 8-0 at home, is 2nd, OKC 3rd in the West.
— Jonathan Feigen (@Jonathan_Feigen) November 29, 2023
