The time is drawing near and the NBA released the Heat schedule for the 2022-2023 season on Wednesday, in which you can see the little respect the league has for the Miami team.
And it is that despite having been a finalist in the East, that is, being one of the four best teams last season, the quintet from the Capital of the Sun was once again excluded from Christmas Day, the most important date on the calendar. However, for their conference they will play on December 25: Celtics vs. Bucks and 76ers vs. Knicks.
There will also be no Opening Day on October 18 reserved for the 76ers vs. Celtics and Lakers vs. Warriors games, the current NBA champions.
“I think we should play on Christmas,” said Heat player Tyler Herro, who is preparing for his season. “But I feel like this is nothing new. I feel like last year we could have played at Christmas. But the media are going to do what they have to do, cover whoever they want, say what they want and we just have to keep working.”
The Heat will debut on Wednesday, October 19 (7:30 pm TV: Bally Sun Sports) against the Bulls at FTX Arena and the second game of the season will also be at home on Friday, October 21 (&;30 pm TV: ESPN) against the Celtics in a rematch game of the last Eastern Finals in which the Boston team prevailed in Game 7.
The Miami team will have two more games at home, where it will play 10 of the first 14 games. These four opening games at FTX Arena will be a record in franchise history.
In compensation, beginning with their 14th game, the Heat will play 17 of their next 26 games on the road, although the longest road trip will be from December 30 to January 6 when they visit Denver, Utah, Los Angeles (Clippers and Lakers), and Phoenix.
While the FTX Arena will have the longest stay from March 1 to 10 with six consecutive games against teams from the East (76ers, Knicks, Hawks twice and Cavaliers twice) recovering the option to play two games in a row.
MIami’s quintet faces these four Eastern Conference teams — the Nets, Bulls, Detroit Pistons and 76ers — just three times, hosting the latter two just once and instead making just one trip to Brooklyn and Chicago. With the rest of the East teams he will play four times, in two games at home and two away.
As usual, the Heat play every team in the West twice: one home and one away.
Media Day is September 26 and the Miami team’s 82-game schedule includes a game on December 17 in Mexico City, where they will play the Spurs in a home game. Already in 2017 the Heat played in Mexico, defeating the Nets on December 9.
The Heat’s regular season will play 14 games on consecutive nights and will end on April 9 in a state matchup against the Magic at FTX Arena. The 2023 All-Star Game is scheduled for February 19 in Salt Lake City.
For now, this season the Heat will have 11 games on national television: six games on ESPN (Celtics, Lakers, Suns, Mavericks, Nets and Bucks), four on TNT (against Hawks, Celtics, Raptors and 76ers) and one on ABC ( against the Bucks).
In addition to that other 11 games will be broadcast on NBA TV (Warriors, Celtics, Clippers, Spurs in Mexico City, Lakers, Nuggets, 76ers, Hawks, Cavaliers, Nets and Mavericks.
On the radio, the games will be broadcast in Spanish (with the voices of José Pañeda and Joe Pujala) first on Radio Mambí (710 AM) and then on MIX (98.3 FM).
