The primary NBA recreation on NBC in 23 years will characteristic the defending champion Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder towards maybe their chief competitors within the West, and the Cleveland Cavaliers are again on Christmas Day for the primary time for the reason that LeBron James period, league and community sources confirmed to The Athletic on Friday.
The Rockets, who completed second within the West final season and traded for Kevin Durant, will play the Thunder on ring night time on Oct. 21 — as is custom within the NBA — adopted by the Golden State Warriors on the Los Angeles Lakers.
This coming season is the primary of an 11-year, $75 billion nationwide TV contract for the NBA, which includes a new partnership with Amazon and a reuniting of the league with NBC. ESPN and ABC stay companions — and can carry Christmas Day video games per regular — whereas TNT is not a league accomplice.
ESPN was the primary to report NBC’s opening night time slate in addition to the 5 Christmas Day video games, that are:
Cleveland on the New York Knicks
San Antonio at Oklahoma Metropolis
Houston on the Lakers
Dallas at Golden State
Minnesota at Denver.
The Cavs completed first within the East within the 2024-25 season and have developed a rivalry with the Knicks. The crew that beat them each within the playoffs final season — the Indiana Pacers — misplaced star level guard Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles in Recreation 7 of the NBA Finals, and they didn’t re-sign heart Myles Turner in free company.
The Spurs ought to have star Victor Wembanyama again from his blood clot that price him the tip of final season. Relying on what he decides career-wise, this might be LeBron’s final Christmas recreation, and the Timberwolves and Nuggets performed one another on Christmas final season.
The Cavs final performed on Christmas in 2017, in an NBA Finals rematch towards the Warriors.
Cleveland and New York are the one two East groups enjoying on Christmas, in no small half as a result of accidents to stars on different groups. Not solely is Haliburton out for the Pacers this season, however Celtics star Jayson Tatum is not going to play as a result of a torn Achilles — a possible consider Boston not showing on the league’s marquee day within the common season.
The NBA will face competitors from the NFL once more on Christmas Day. Final 12 months, it needed to face off towards two soccer video games; this 12 months, there will probably be three.
The Cowboys will play the Commanders at 1 p.m. ET, the Lions and Vikings are set to kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET, and the Broncos and Chiefs will play at 8:15 p.m. ET. All three of these video games will probably be streamed — the primary two on Netflix and the latter on Amazon — so the NBA may have linear tv all to itself.
Final 12 months’s Christmas Day video games didn’t lack viewers. It was probably the most considered slate of video games in 5 years, in response to Nielsen, averaging 5.34 million viewers.
The Lakers-Warriors prime-time recreation averaged a mixed 7.91 million viewers between ESPN and ABC. It was a hearty quantity for the NBA.
(Photograph: Angela Weiss /AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
