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36 games in 67 days and a home-heavy finish for Pistons in NBA season’s 2nd half
The Pistons spent most of the first half of the NBA season playing the league’s toughest schedule, so the law of averages says things will get a little less burdensome for them in the second half.
That second-half schedule – released Wednesday afternoon by the NBA with makeup games caused by postponements for COVID-19 protocols and weather alike included – starts on the road when they play at Charlotte on March 11 and at Brooklyn on March 13.
After that, 20 of the season’s remaining 34 games will come at Little Caesars Arena with the possibility of more fans being permitted as vaccine rollouts continue, case rates decline and capacity restrictions are loosened accordingly.
If the quality of opponent turns more favorable for the Pistons, the challenge will come in shoehorning 36 games into a 67-day window from March 11 to the regular season’s conclusion May 16. The Pistons will host Miami that day to conclude a four-game home stand. In fact, seven of the last eight games will come at Little Caesars Arena.
The Pistons will play eight back-to-back sets in the second half after playing seven in the first half and having three others wiped out by postponements.
Their busiest and most difficult week of the second half comes when they play five games in seven days on a Western Conference road trip that starts April 5 in Oklahoma City. It starts and ends with back-to-back sets and includes an April 6 makeup game in Denver after the originally scheduled game from Feb. 1 was postponed due to an inconclusive virus test that later proved to be negative.
The Pistons will make up their scheduled Feb. 17 game at Dallas – postponed by last week’s winter storm that wreaked havoc in Texas – on April 21 to start a three-game road trip that takes the Pistons to San Antonio and Indiana.
The two Little Caesars Arena games to be made up from the first half are a March 15 game with San Antonio, originally scheduled for Feb. 16, and an April 1 game with Washington, originally scheduled for Jan. 15.
After five instances of playing the same team in the same city consecutively in the season’s first half, including this week’s pair of games at Orlando, the Pistons will have zero of them in the second half. They’ll play the Los Angeles Clippers consecutively on April 11 and 14, but the first of those games wraps up their five-game Western road swing and the second is at Little Caesars Arena. Sixteen of the second half’s 36 games will come against Western Conference opponents, 20 against teams from the East. Seventeen of the 36 games come against teams who were among the top eight teams in either conference as of games played through Tuesday, 19 against teams in the bottom seven.
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