The NBA recently announced the schedule for the league’s 22-team restart to the 2019-20 season, to be held on a single-site campus at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. The Phoenix Suns will play eight “seeding games” at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex, opening on July 31 against the Washington Wizards.
The Suns’ complete schedule for their final eight seeding games, selected from their remaining regular-season matchups, is listed below. All of the Suns’ first seven games will be televised on FOX Sports Arizona networks with the last game to be determined:
2019-20 NBA SEASON RESTART SEEDING GAMES (ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex)
Friday, July 31: Washington
Sunday, August 2: Dallas
Tuesday, August 4: LA Clippers
Thursday, August 6: Indiana
Saturday, August 8: Miami
Monday, August 10: Oklahoma City
Tuesday, August 11: Philadelphia
Thursday, August 13: Dallas
The Suns enter the restart 13th in the Western Conference standings with a 26-39 record, though they sit just 2 ½ games behind ninth place. At the conclusion of the seeding games, the seven teams in each conference with the highest combined winning percentages across regular-season games and seeding games will be the first through seventh seeds for the NBA Playoffs for that conference. If the team with the eighth-best combined winning percentage in a conference is four games or fewer ahead of the team with the ninth-best combined winning percentage in the same conference, then those two teams would compete in a play-in tournament to determine the eighth playoff seed in the conference. The play-in tournament will be double elimination for the eighth seed and single elimination for the ninth seed.
If the team with the eighth-best combined winning percentage (regular-season games and seeding games) in a conference is more than four games ahead of the team with the ninth-best combined winning percentage in the same conference, then the team with the eighth-best winning percentage would be the eighth playoff seed in that conference.
Once the NBA’s 16-team playoff field is set, the NBA Playoffs will proceed in a traditional conference-based format with four rounds of best-of-seven series. The 2020 NBA Finals will end no later than October 13.
