2018-2019 Trail Blazers Schedule Highs and Lows

The 2018-2019 NBA schedule has been released and the Portland Trail Blazers will now get set to defend their Northwest Division crown.

The opening group of games for the squad is extremely rough. In their first sixteen games, the Blazers face just two teams that finished below .500 last season, and one of them is the re-tooled, LeBron-led Los Angeles Lakers. In fact, Portland will get to know the new-look Lakers very well, facing them three times over that period.

Coming through Thanksgiving, Portland has its second longest road trip of the season at a stately six games, with the team traveling 7,273 miles start to finish. The journey starts with the Lakers on November 14th, and circling the country with trips to Minnesota, New York, Washington D.C., Milwaukee, and ending up back against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland on November 23rd.

The Blazers finally get a break in January, with a mostly home slate of six games versus New York, Chicago, Charlotte, Denver, Sacramento, and Cleveland.

The longest road journey of the season is seven game trek from February 21st to March 5th, with the Blazers starting against Brooklyn, and ending in Memphis.

If the first few games will be a challenging streak, the home stretch is a massive boon to Portland, with eleven of the twelve games against teams that finished outside the playoffs last season, though it does include the Blazers final regular season tilt against the Lakers. The key may end up being a back-to-back set against the Denver Nuggets on April 5th and April 7th.

Former Blazers make their return to the Rose City throughout the year, with Pat Connaughton’s Milwaukee Bucks visiting on November 6th, while Ed Davis and Shabazz Napier do not come to visit with their Brooklyn Nets until March 25th. Seth Curry rematches his former squad in the Blazers visit to Dallas against the Mavericks on December 4th.

Speaking of rematches, the Blazers get a home bout against the New Orleans Pelicans on November 1st.

The 2018-2019 season kicks off Thursday, October 18th versus the Los Angeles Lakers at the Moda Center.