Sixers Offseason Notebook: What To Think Of The Schedule?
They’re going to play 82 games again.
Adam Aaronson, whose legal name is Sixers Adam (@SixersAdam on Twitter), covers the Sixers for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez. He has been legally banned from covering the team in person, and when that ban was set to be lifted, Covid-19 struck. He believes cantaloupe is the best food in existence, and is brought to you by the Official Realtor of The Process, Adam Ksebe.
We are amid the stretch run of the NBA offseason. That means one of my favorite parts of the summer has arrived: the NBA schedule release. The schedule came out late last week. You can find the entire Sixers schedule here.
Here’s a disclaimer: the schedule does not inform us as much as we want it to. But there are legitimate factors that can help determine the toughness (or lack thereof). Let’s get into them, shall we?
The stuff that matters
Each year, there are four teams in the Eastern Conference who the Sixers play only three times instead of four. Obviously, you’d want those to be better teams so your strength of schedule isn’t as high. The four teams that the Sixers only play three times are Atlanta, Washington, Indiana and Milwaukee, which is the best draw the Sixers have had in years. It’s only a few games different than another team’s schedule, but any minor advantage could be a big deal for the Sixers as they try to repeat as the #1 seed.
The Sixers have 13 back-to-backs, right around the league average amount, but when you take a deeper look, you’ll find that only two of those back-to-backs are against two teams who each made the playoffs last season. Back-to-backs are always hard, especially for a team built around Joel Embiid, but having some more favorable matchups might do him and them some good.
How about this for good luck: the Sixers are off from January 8th until January 11th, and have no travel during that time. I’m still not sure how or why the schedule was built that way, but it definitely helps the Sixers to almost have something like an early All-Star Break a few weeks before the actual one takes place. Obviously, when you have Joel Embiid, off days are hugely beneficial. The Sixers getting a significant resting period about six weeks into the season could prove to be huge for both Embiid and the team altogether.
The Sixers have an extremely tough stretch from March 21st to the 29th when they play Miami at home, then travel across the country to the west coast and play the Los Angeles Lakers, LA Clippers and defending Western Conference champion Phoenix Suns. Following those games, the Sixers come back home and face the Bucks. It’ll be a brutal stretch.
After that period, though, none of their final seven games are against teams that made the playoffs last season. So if the Sixers can tread water in that tough stretch, they could get hot down the stretch.
The best home opener in many years
A quick aside here before we wrap up: the game I’m most excited for is the team’s home opener against Brooklyn. We have not seen these two teams face off when healthy -- and Kevin Durant missed every single Nets-Sixers game last season. Getting an early look at the Sixers against this year’s title favorites should be fascinating, especially as the two may once again be jostling for advantageous playoff positioning.