NBA sets makeup dates for 11 games

The NBA has rescheduled all 11 games that were postponed in December for virus-related reasons and either shifted the times or dates of 10 other games to help accommodate those changes.

Toronto had six games affected, Chicago had five and Brooklyn had four. In all, 18 of the league’s 30 teams had at least one game date changed by the postponements or future adjustments, all of which were revealed Monday.

There are now seven teams that have at least one stint of playing four games in five nights: Chicago, Toronto, Brooklyn, Cleveland, Miami, New Orleans and Denver. The original NBA schedule didn’t call for any such stretches, though it was unavoidable with the changes.

“The objective and priority here was to avoid teams playing three games in three nights and look for a middle-ground approach,” said Evan Wasch, an NBA executive vice president who helps oversee the league’s scheduling.

The Nets — who couldn’t play at Portland last month because they were missing nearly a dozen players with virus-related issues — have a most unusual schedule coming next week.

Brooklyn plays Sunday against San Antonio at home — then will fly across the country to play the rescheduled game at Portland the next day, Jan. 10. The Nets then come back East and visit Chicago on Jan. 12.

To help with the demands of that Portland trip, the NBA moved Sunday’s Spurs-at-Nets game to noon Eastern. The teams had been scheduled to play a night game, but now the Nets should be in Portland by late Sunday night.

There were a couple other options for that Nets-Blazers game, Wasch said, but having it played Jan. 10 was the best for everyone involved.

“The main reason to release these now is because we wanted to make sure that teams had at least one week’s notice on any postponements, from a travel perspective, basketball planning, business, ticket sales, all those things,” Wasch said. “It made sense to do it now.”