2009-10 Hornets Schedule Preview
NBA schedules were announced yesterday, and some teams really lucked out while others got the short end of the stick. So which did the Hornets get? Let’s take a closer look at how New Orleans’ schedule is going to treat them this coming year…
Division games are always split up between 2 home and 2 away games, but the Hornets will have to play most other teams in their conference only 3 times. The games are always split up between 2 home games and 1 away game for each team. This year, the Hornets have to actually play Utah 4 times, even though the Jazz and Hornets aren’t in the same division. As far as playoff teams go, that leaves 3 games a piece to be played with Portland, the Lakers, and Denver and 4 games between the Hornets and the rest of the playoff teams. New Orleans has the in-season home court advantage this year with a 5 home, 4 away split between the Hornets and these teams with only a 3 game season series. The only team New Orleans has to play twice away and only once at home is the Lakers. The Trailblazers and Nuggets both have to travel to New Orleans twice. The only thing making the Hornets’ schedule rough is the fact that they have to play 4 Western Conference playoff teams 4 times. Although the home/away factor is barely in their favor, they have to play a Western Conference playoff team a total of 25 (13 home, 12 away) times, only 3 of which are at the back end of a back-to-back. That’s almost one-third of the entire season being played against teams from a wildly competitive conference in which 6 games separated the 2 through 8 seeds last year. This doesn’t even include the 2 times a piece that they will have to face the likes of Cleveland, Boston, and Orlando.
New Orleans fared slightly better than last year with only 16 back-to-backs this year. They had 18 last year. Both numbers are close to around the league average. Their record on the final game of the back-to-backs was 8 wins, 10 losses. However, only 6 of those 18 teams failed to finish with a winning record. This year, 10 out of the 16 clubs the Hornets have to play are teams that did not finish with a winning record last year. This bodes well for New Orleans and an educated guess would put them at around 9 wins and 7 losses for those particularly rough back-to-back games this season.
9 games are going to be nationally televised this year. This number is definitely above the league average and should help the Hornets to show off the championship-caliber team they feel like they have. It will be a tough test, however, as 7 out of 9 of the games are away games and all are against marquee opponents.
Road trips are definitely a highlight for the Hornets this year as well. Remarkably, they only have to play one rough 5-game road trip that includes 2 back-to-backs, one 4-game road trip, and one 3-game road trip. The other 29 away games are played one or two games away at a time for the Hornets. Last year, there were two 4-game and four 3-game road trips. Overall, the schedule has been kinder to the Hornets this year than last. The Hornets’ scheduling luck gets a B+ this year. Now let’s see if they can capitalize on it…
Related posts:
One Comment
I should email my girlfriend about your post.