Can The Denver Nuggets Capitalize On A Favorable 2022-23 Schedule?

The NBA officially released its 2022-23 schedule on Thursday, providing a view of the landscape the Denver Nuggets will have to traverse as they play their way through the upcoming season.

By several measures, it appears Denver will have one of the more favorable schedules relative to many of the other teams in the league. But even if this holds true as injuries and trades inevitably change the contours of that landscape, the more salient question then becomes whether the Nuggets will be able to make the most of that smoother road and, among other things, secure advantageous playoff seeding by season’s end.

According to the NBA calendar app at Positive Residual, the Nuggets have the easiest strength of schedule (SoS) of all 30 teams in the league, at .476 (with .500 being average, and above .500 being more difficult). One caveat to this is that that site’s metric for SoS factors in “not just opponent strength, but also home/away, game location altitude, and whether a team has a rest advantage or not,” meaning that Denver landing on that most auspicious score is at least partly due to their Mile High altitude advantage. Even so, it still bodes well for a team that will have to make some significant readjustments well before postseason considerations even come into play.

Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., two of the Nuggets’ three maximum contract stars along with back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic, will be reintegrating with the team following extended injury absences Additionally, newly-acquired players like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Bruce Brown, and potentially even first-round draft pick rookie Christian Braun, will also need to be brought into the fold with players they’ve never shared the court with before.

Denver will surely be hoping that fewer speed bumps in the schedule will lead to smoother sailing as this new incarnation of the team acclimates and gels. And this will be particularly true in a Western Conference which by all appearances will remain fiercely competitive, or become even more so. If the Nuggets are to legitimately compete for the championship, which is their clear aspiration this season, coalescing quickly will be key.

The ability of the Nuggets to get off to a strong start out of the gate even as new teammates adjust to playing together, and Murray and Porter continue working their way back towards their previous forms, will be critical in terms of stockpiling some early wins to help keep their position in the standings afloat down the final stretch of the regular season, especially considering that their elevation-boosted home edge in Denver raises the stakes on retaining home court advantage through as many playoff rounds as possible in making a deep run.

Another indicator that beginning the season strong will be important for Denver is the split in strength of schedule between the first and second halves of the season. The Nuggets’ overall SoS of .476 drops (read: becomes easier) to .462 when the range is limited to their first 41 games. But in the latter 41, that number rises to .490 – still slightly more favorable than average, but much less so than in the first half of the season.

Here are some other key elements of the Nuggets’ 2022-23 regular season schedule:

Racking up mileage: At 49,668 miles, Denver will travel the farthest of all teams in the NBA, which could serve as somewhat of a counterweight to their comparatively light SoS.

Road-heavy on the ends, home-heavy in the middle: The Nuggets will play 13 of their first 19 games (68%) on the road, including one four-game trip that mostly takes them to the East. But that is immediately followed by a 28-game stretch in which 20 games (71%) will be played at Ball Arena in Denver, including one five-game and two four-game home stands. And this in turn is followed by another run of 26 games with 16 (61%) played away on opposing courts. It’s worth noting that during that 28-game home-heavy stretch, Denver’s SoS will be a breezy .428, creating a golden opportunity for the aforementioned early loading up of wins.

Fewer back-to-backs: Denver will play 12 games on the second night of a back-to-back, down from 13 in the two previous seasons. This is some low-key great news for the Nuggets, as they will almost certainly be resting both Murray and Porter in those games, especially in the first half of the season. Those rest days, in which the Nuggets will have to rely heavily on reserves such as Brown and backup point guard sophomore Bones Hyland, are another major factor in the importance of capitalizing on relatively favorable schedule.

Balanced rest days: Speaking of rest, the Nuggets will have 11 games apiece in which they are either at an advantage or disadvantage due to their own or their opponents’ rest days between games. League-wide, this puts them in the upper third on both counts, making for an equitable balance – and when it comes to NBA schedule-making, when a team at a minimum cannot complain that it’s unfair, that should generally be considered good news.

National exposure: The Nuggets will have 16 games nationally televised on major networks, including eight on ESPN, seven on TNT and one on ABC. That’s up from 14 last season, and good for the tenth most in the league. Denver will additionally have 12 games shown on NBA TV, bringing their total up to 28 games available not only to the national market, but also to their local Colorado markets where many Nuggets fans have been deprived of the chance to see their favorite team on their regular cable providers due to the now-far-beyond-inexcusable and seemingly interminable dispute between Comcast and Kroenke Sports and Entertainment’s own regional sports network Altitude.