NEWSLETTER
The NBA officially revealed the 2023-24 NBA regular season schedule on Thursday afternoon, which means we now can start to panic about how many games the Chicago Bulls will lose!
If you haven’t gotten a look at the Bulls’ full schedule, I listed it month-by-month here. We also have the preseason schedule for you here. What I want to do in this post is share some key takeaways from this upcoming season’s slate, as well as fill you in on some of the most important matchups.
Get out your calendars!
Home Opener
The Chicago Bulls’ opening night will also serve as their home opener for the first time since the 2020-21 season. They will welcome in Billy Donovan’s old squad, the Oklahoma City Thunder, on Oct. 25 at 7:00 p.m. CT. Next up will be the Toronto Raptors in a Play-In Tournament rematch two nights later at the United Center.
While the OKC matchup may not feel like the most exciting opening night, there will be several high-profile youngsters on the floor. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is becoming a true star after averaging 31.4 points per game last season. And plenty of eyes will also be on 2022 No. 2-overall pick Chet Holmgren, who is expected to make his NBA debut after missing the entirety of last season.
Lots of Mini Series!
The NBA has slowly weaved two-game sets into the schedule over the past couple of seasons. We saw the Chicago Bulls have three of these mini-series last season with battles against the Raptors, Heat, and 76ers. This time around, however, Chicago will see this occur four times over the year.
Here are the matchups:
11/15 – vs. ORL
11/17 – vs. ORL
11/18 – vs. MIA
11/20 – vs. MIA
12/14 – @ MIA
12/16 – @ MIA
1/5 – vs. CHA
1/8 – @ CHA
As you can see, two of these series will come back-to-back, as the Bulls welcome both the Orlando Magic and Miami Heat to the United Center in mid-November. I’d honestly love to this happen more and more moving forward. While I understand the whole schedule shouldn’t be structured like this, it does help reduce travel time and add another level of strategy into the mix. Reminiscent of a playoff series, players and coaches alike get a chance to make some instant adjustments for Game 2.
How Many Back-to-Backs?
You hate back-to-backs, I hate back-to-backs, and NBA players hate back-to-backs. Fortunately for the Chicago Bulls, they did see their number of B2Bs slightly decrease this season. After playing in 15 last season, they will have just 14 in 2023-24, which ties them with 10 other teams for the second-most in the league.
Overall, it’s clear the NBA prioritized leveling the number of B2Bs across the league. We saw teams range from having anywhere between 12 to 16 B2Bs in 2022-23. As for this year, every team has somewhere between 13-15.
Rest Advantage vs. Rest Disadvantage
If you want great insight on scheduling around the league, I can’t recommend Positive Residual enough. The website has fun stats for each team, as well as a running Strength of Schedule through the season, which you can check them all out here.
One of my favorite pieces of information they share each season is the number of games where a team has the rest advantage versus the rest disadvantage. In other words, they tell us how many games the Chicago Bulls will come into with fresher legs than their opponent.
According to their database, the Bulls will have 13 games with a rest advantage this season, which is the sixth-most in the NBA. Even better, they’ll have just eight games where they’re considered to have less rest than their opponent, which sits alone as the fewest in the league!
For what it’s worth, last season they tied for having the 4th-fewest rest advantages, while they tied for having the second-most rest disadvantages.
A Six-Game Homestead?
After a tough start to December with battles against Milwaukee, Miami, Denver, and Philly, the Chicago Bulls will have a massive homestand to finish out the year. Take a look:
12/20 – vs. LAL
12/21 – vs. SAS
12/23 – vs. CLE
12/26 – vs. ATL
12/28 – vs. IND
12/30 – vs. PHI
All things considered, we could look at this as one of the most important stretches of the season at the end of the year. The Bulls need to take care of business in front of their home crowd.
So … National Television
The NBA isn’t interested in the Chicago Bulls. I know, shocking. After entering last season with 14 games scheduled on national television, the Bulls have been downgraded to just seven total games. Only one of those will be on TNT, while three will be on NBA TV and three will be on ESPN.
Why Do I See Only 80 Games?
I highly doubt anyone sat there and counted, but you should know that the NBA only scheduled 80 of the 82 games for each team thus far. The reason we see this is because of the looming In-Season Tournament this winter.
The goal has always been to make tournament games count toward the regular season. With that in mind, they had to leave two slots open for the week of Dec. 4, as they wait to see which teams make it out of the initial group stage play and into the Knockout Round. Depending on how that all plays out, every team will have at least two more games put on the calendar.
Note: The two teams that make it to the In-Season Tournament championship will play 83 games this season, as only the finale will not count toward the regular season.
Best Games on the Schedule
Obviously, this is going to be pretty subjective, but I thought I’d still list some of the matchups I’m most looking forward to right now.
