nibl nibl

What's up with that NIBL 2K schedule?


The schedule was particularly nasty this year... with an odd number of teams and 25 weeks of NBA games. Hazzah, good eventually triumphed and here's how.

First off, everything about the schedule was randomized with the exception of some home/away assignments which I had to do to keep everything from blowing up. I did everything with numbers (you know, east1-8 and west1-7) and assigned teams to the numbers as the very last step.

The schedule has four parts or sections to it:

  1. Intra-conference games, part 1 - In weeks 2-8, each team will play every other team in its conference once. One team in the Western Conference gets a bye each week.

  2. Inter-conference games - In weeks 1 and 12-18, each team will play every other team outside its conference. One team in the East gets a bye each week.

  3. Intra-conference games, part2 - The regular season concludes, weeks 19-25, with each team playing other team in its conference again. One team in the West gets a bye each week. If you played a team at home during the first intra-conference game, then you're on the road for the second and visa versa.

  4. Weird games - Well, if you're keeping count, we have three weeks left to schedule and this is where the schedule gets a tiny bit asymmetric. In weeks 9 & 10, all Eastern Conference teams will have a bye, and in week 11 each team in the East plays one extra intra-conference game (in addition to the normal ones talked about above). We grouped some of the bye weeks during this period because of Christmas and New Years. The West gets a little less of a holiday break as each West team plays 2 intra-conference games during weeks 9-11 and has one bye.

If you're wondering whether your team got screwed, check the schedule for your team. Each team should:

  • Play 22 total games: 11 home games, 11 away games, and 3 bye weeks
  • Play each team within their conference (at least) twice... once at home and once on the road
  • Play each team outside their conference once. Western Conference teams will play 8 inter-conference (4 at home, 4 on the road) and Eastern Conference teams will play 7 inter-conference games (3 home, 4 road or 4 home, 3 road)
  • Eastern Conference teams have 15 conference games and 7 games with teams from the West
  • Western Conference teams have 14 conference games and 8 games with teams from the East

Email me is you have any questions... Excellent.

yow, bill