The NBA unveiled the schedule for the 2025-26 regular season on Thursday, featuring two new broadcast partners and several changes to a two-decade status quo. Here is a detailed breakdown.
Broadcast television tonnage
The most consequential change in the new media rights deal is a dramatic increase in games on broadcast television. This season, 80 regular season games will be carried on broadcast television in at least part of the country, including 38 that will air nationwide.
NBC
New broadcast partner NBC will account for most of those games, 58 in total. Of those, 42 will air as part of the network’s “Coast 2 Coast Tuesdays,” a split doubleheader in which most affiliates will receive only one game. (That includes one Monday night that will use the same format.) Most weeks, the regional split will include one game at 8 PM ET in the Eastern and Central time zones and another at 8 PM PT — 11 PM ET — in the Mountain and Pacific.
Of those 11 PM ET games, all will be hosted by the NBA’s Pacific time zone teams, meaning multiple NBC games for low-profile teams like the Kings and Trail Blazers (four each). Opponents will include some Central time zone teams — with the Mavericks, Rockets, Timberwolves and Thunder each set to appear in those windows twice and the Spurs once — but none from the Eastern time zone.
NBC does have two weeks where its late game will take place at 10 PM ET, January 20 (Lakers-Nuggets) and January 27 (Clippers-Jazz).
Mountain and Pacific time zone teams will appear only once in the early game window, with the Nuggets set for an 8 PM ET game against the Mavericks on December 23.
NBC’s remaining 16 games will consist of an Opening Night doubleheader, a Martin Luther King Day tripleheader and 11 “Sunday Night Basketball” games. The “Sunday Night Basketball” slate begins with a doubleheader of Lakers-Knicks and Thunder-Nuggets on February 1. After a week off for Super Bowl Sunday, NBC will then have games every Sunday the rest of the season, including the All-Star Game on February 15 and Celtics-Lakers on February 22, both of which will air adjacent to NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage.
Because NBC is airing so many games, the bar for appearing on broadcast television will be lower than in the past. All-but-six teams will appear on NBC — not a Peacock exclusive, but the actual NBC broadcast network — at least once this season, the exceptions being the Nets, Hornets, Bulls, Pelicans, Raptors and Wizards.
ABC
As for the league’s incumbent broadcast network partner, ABC is set for 23 games, including 18 outside of its five-game Christmas Day schedule. The network’s non-Christmas schedule begins with its now-customary late January Saturday tripleheader, which this year will be Knicks-Sixers, Warriors-Timberwolves and Lakers-Mavericks, with the latter of the three marking Luka Doncic’s second return to Dallas.
ABC will air its usual Saturday night and Sunday afternoon games through Selection Sunday in March, with its regular season finale of Timberwolves-Thunder set for March 15 (also Oscars Sunday).
While ABC will be off the air during March Madness, NBC will continue its “Sunday Night Basketball” schedule, including doubleheaders on Elite Eight Sunday (Knicks-Thunder and Warriors-Nuggets) and the day of the Women’s National Championship (Lakers-Mavericks — in Doncic’s third return to Dallas — and Rockets-Warriors).
Streaming over cable
After 23-straight seasons airing primarily on cable, only 55 of the NBA’s 237 national TV games this season are set to air exclusively on its lone cable partner, ESPN. ESPN games will primarily air on Wednesday nights, with five Friday doubleheaders, a Thursday Opening Week doubleheader, Sunday afternoon games on the day of the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl, and two Saturday night games — one November 8 (Suns-Clippers) and the other following the ACC Tournament final in March (Kings-Clippers).
Nearly twice as many games will air exclusively on streaming, as Prime Video (60) and Peacock (41) will combine for 101 exclusive games. All of the Peacock exclusives are on Monday nights, save for a Saturday night Mavericks-Pistons game from Mexico City on November 1.
Prime games will air exclusively on Fridays through the end of the NFL season before branching out into Saturdays starting January 10 and Thursdays starting January 15. The Prime schedule also includes one Sunday afternoon Magic-Grizzlies game from London. Even though Prime does not carry NCAA March Madness, it will still have a two-week break between March 14 (Bucks-Hawks) and March 28 (Spurs-Bucks), and go nearly three full weeks between weeknight games.
Marquee matchups
When the NBA had only two mouths to feed, it was able to parcel out its marquee matchups equitably. That is necessarily no longer the case with three partners. ESPN/ABC will miss out on the Lakers-Celtics rivalry for the first time since 2007-08 — when neither meeting was nationally televised — as the first game will air on Prime Video and the second on NBC.
ABC will get two of the four Lakers-Warriors games, with NBC and Prime splitting the other two (NBC’s is on Opening Night). As previously noted, ABC and NBC will each get one of Luka Doncic’s two returns to Dallas, while Prime Video will get both of Anthony Davis’ returns to Los Angeles. ABC and NBC will split Lakers-Knicks, and NBC and Prime will split Warriors-Knicks.
Prime also gets the second of two NBA Finals rematches as the Pacers face the Thunder January 23. (The first, as previously announced, airs on ESPN the third day of the season.)
Other notes
The NBA’s games on the final day of the regular season — Sunday, April 12 — are scheduled for 6:00 and 8:30 PM ET. Those games contractually belong to ESPN. Not only does that mean the NBA is avoiding the final round of the Masters, it is also means that ESPN will — at least — be preempting Sunday Night Baseball that week. Far more likely is that the schedule is the first tangible sign that ESPN will not be carrying Sunday Night Baseball at all.
Beyond the regular season, ESPN/ABC said Thursday that it will carry the Eastern Conference Finals this year, meaning that NBC will by default carry the West series.
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