Miami Heat announce remaining schedule for NBA restart

The Miami Heat will finally hit the court again beginning August 1 against the Denver Nuggets as part of an eight-game schedule that will determine playoff seeding and complete the 2019-20 NBA season.

The game against the Nuggets will take place at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, FL. The final game, against the Indiana Pacers will take place on August 14.

While some teams will be fighting to qualify for the playoffs, the Heat have now already clinched a playoff spot and these remaining games, combined with their current record, with help determine their seeding and their first round opponent. The NBA will schedule possible play-in games for the final spot in the playoffs to join the top eight teams in each conference.

Though the Heat have clearly surpassed expectations so far this season, they will have their work cut out for them with a tough schedule.

Fox Sports Sun will continue to air the remaining eight games and the Heat will release further broadcasting information for local television and radio at a later time. ESPN will broadcast the Heat’s first game against the Nuggets, NBA TV will air their second game against the Toronto Raptors and TNT will air games against the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks, with the remaining broadcasting schedule also to be announced later.

Here is the complete seeding schedule for the Miami Heat:

From the NBA’s press release on how the games were scheduled:

During the season restart, there will be a maximum of seven seeding games per day across three venues at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. 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.