The Hawks And Blazers Found Delightfully Quirky Ways To Announce Their Schedules For The Coming Season

The NBA and all of its offseason machinations has officially reached the midsummer doldrums. With free agency, the draft, summer league, and even the USA Basketball mini-camp all behind us, the news cycle is grinding to a halt. And hoops fans are all feeling a little peaked from the lack of excitement.

Thankfully, the league, in its infinite wisdom and beneficence, still has a few savory morsels left to slip us under the table. Earlier this week, they served up the amuse bouche when they announced the schedule for next season’s marquee games on opening night, Christmas, and MLK.

But on Friday, we got the main course when they released the full schedule, which answered all sorts of burning questions regarding Kawhi Leonard and LeBron James’ returns to their respective former teams and much, much more. It was also an opportunity for each individual team to announce their schedule to their fans, and both the Hawks and the Blazers truly made the most of it.

The Hawks were truly impressive. The organization partnered with Spotify to release “SZN | 50,” an 82-song playlist that includes the date of each game throughout the season and signifies their opponent with a song by a famous artist with direct ties to that city.

Here’s more from the team’s press release:

“With the Atlanta music scene driving music and culture all over the world, we thought there was no better way to honor our city than to partner with Spotify on this creative schedule release to celebrate 50 years of Hawks basketball in Atlanta,” Hawks Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Proctor said.

“Music is at the center of any sports experience and we’re excited to work with the Atlanta Hawks to bring fans closer to the music they love in such a creative editorial way to announce their historic 50th season,” said Xavier “X” Jernigan, Head of Cultural Partnerships at Spotify.

The Trail Blazers were on point as well. They went with a tried and true “Oregon Trail” video, a reference to the classic computer game from the 80s. Needless to say, it did not disappoint.

Here’s to hoping other teams around the league hop on board and exercise some creative muscles when making announcements like these in the future. An otherwise dry press release always looks better with a little added pomp and circumstance.