If we get a season, not all the canceled games are gone forever

There’s a whole lot of confusion over the first two weeks of the season that have been canceled. The league doesn’t know how many games will be canceled, so it can’t make any announcements on the status of the games that have already been canceled. The assumption is that the games that were lost are gone forever. But that’s probably not the case. From the New York Post:

The Post has reported that over the last two months NBA schedulemaker Matt Winnick has designed a handful of contingency schedules including 74-game, 70-game, 60-game and 50-game schedules, based on arena availability. Many of those schedules looking nothing like the original 82-game version.

“It’s not like the preseason where you just lop off games and pick it up,’' one source said.

In fact, even though the Knicks have lost their home opener vs. Miami on Nov. 2, there is still a good chance they play Miami all four times in the unlikely event that the lockout settles soon. The games lost mostly will be interconference games, according to two sources.

via NBA web schedules off the mark.

Makes sense, right? You can’t just pick up the season mid-way through and have some teams playing significantly more division games than their division rivals. You have to find balance in those. The same home and away splits will be maintained because trying to squeeze in games in an arena’s schedule that’s filled out with concerts and rodeos and circus clowns and what not is a logistical nightmare.

So those great opening night games may not be gone forever, nor some of those key matchups in the first two weeks. All we have to do is get a season.

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We’re so screwed.