OKC Thunder play five “baseball-style” series this season

The Oklahoma City Thunder saw their 2022-23 NBA regular season schedule released this week, and there are plenty of takeaways from it. The OKC Thunder open up against Minnesota, in Holmgren’s home state for his NBA debut, they host a New Year’s Eve game for the 15th consecutive season and find themselves on a major network for the first time in two seasons.

With the NBA releasing their 2022-23 regular season schedule, one of the major talking points has been the fact that NBA teams will travel fewer miles than ever before. The estimated travel has been reduced to 41,000 miles per team, a record low in the 30-team, 82-game era. That is nearly a 2,000-mile reduction per team from last year. Part of the reason why is the “baseball-style” series.

The OKC Thunder will play in five “baseball-style” series this season, which will help limit travel league-wide

The NBA introduced these “baseball-style” series during the pandemic to cut down on travel and keep the players safe. This now appears to be predominately adopted as a quality of life improvement for the league.

The baseball-style series features the same two teams playing back-to-back games usually with a day in between. It creates a fun environment to see the adjustments game-to-game. This season, the OKC Thunder will be featured in five of such sets.

The Oklahoma City Thunder will host the Clippers on October 25th and 27th, the Blazers on December 19th and 21st, the Kings on February 26th and 28th, and Jazz on March 3rd and 5th. Their last set takes place on the road against the Clippers on March 21st and 23rd.

There is reason to believe these baseball-style sets help the OKC Thunder in a big way. Not only do they have a good coaching staff to make game-to-game adjustments, but as a young team that is not conditioned for an 82-game schedule, limiting the travel can help avoid the “rookie wall.” Especially with all but one set coming in the Paycom Center.