The LA Clippers were originally scheduled to play two teams who didn’t make the cut for the NBA’s return.
The NBA has officially approved a plan to return and finish the 2019-20 NBA season. The LA Clippers and 21 other teams will gather in Orlando, Florida where each team will play eight “seeding games” plus a potential play-in tournament to determine the eighth seed in each conference. After that, the league will conduct the NBA Playoffs in the same singular location at Walt Disney Resort.
The eight “seeding games” for each team will closely resemble their next eight scheduled games before the league shut down in mid-March. For the LA Clippers, those next eight games were:
Fri, Mar 13: vs Brooklyn Nets
Sat, Mar 14: vs New Orleans Pelicans
Mon, Mar 16: vs Dallas Mavericks
Wed, Mar 18: at Denver Nuggets
Fri, Mar 20: vs Phoenix Suns
Mon, Mar 23: at New York Knicks
Wed, Mar 25: at Brooklyn Nets
Fri, Mar 27: at Detroit Pistons
The New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons will not be participating in Orlando.
Two of the Clippers next eight scheduled games were to be against the New York Knicks and Detroit Pistons, both of which did not make the 22 team-cut to play in Orlando. This leaves some questions as to what the Clippers’ final schedule will actually look like.
Looking ahead, their next opponent was set to be the Charlotte Hornets, another team that did not make the cut to play in Orlando. After that game, the Clippers were scheduled to face the Indiana Pacers and the Sacramento Kings, two teams that will both make the trip to Orlando. However, the Kings will hit their eighth scheduled game before then, so the Clippers’ next scheduled opponent would be the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The NBA will have to do some slight schedule-adjusting to make sure every team in attendance plays exactly eight games once action returns. Four teams (the Lakers, Magic, Heat, and Blazers) would not be able to reach a total of eight games by the conclusion of their original schedule using this plan. Presumably, the league will fill the remainder of their seeding-game schedule with matchups against each other.
So while it is not yet official, it looks like the Clippers schedule for the remainder of the NBA season will look like this: Nets, Pelicans, Mavericks, Nuggets, Suns, Nets, Pacers, Kings.