Lakers to Meet Clippers to Resume Season July 30

The Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers will resume play July 30 by facing each other at Walt Disney World Resort, the NBA announced Friday.

The game will be the second of what the league has dubbed “seeding games.” The first will be between the Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans. Both games will be televised nationally by TNT.

The 22 teams participating in the season restart will play eight seeding games each at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Florida through Aug. 14.

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.

The Lakers enter the seeding games with the best record in the Western Conference, 49-14, and second best in the league behind the Milwaukee Bucks, who have a 53-12 record.

The Clippers have the second-best record in the Western Conference and fourth-best in the league, 44-20.

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.

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,” according to the league.

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; and
   — 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.

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.

Source: NBC Los Angeles