Aspects of port empty transition scheduling are described herein. In one embodiment, when one or more cells are added to a queue in a network communications device, an enqueue indicator is generated. The enqueue indicator identifies a number of cells added to the queue. With reference to the enqueue indicator, a queue scheduler maintains a count of cells enqueued for communication and issues a port pick credit for a port of the network communications device. A port scheduler schedules a pick for communicating over the port with reference to the port pick credit and forwards the pick to the queue scheduler. In turn, the queue scheduler forwards a queue pick to the queue, and at least one of the cells is forwarded to dequeue logic. According to aspects of the embodiments described herein, empty port scheduling inefficiencies may be avoided and network throughput increased.