As one of the league’s new television partners, the NBA on NBC will tip off once again this season after a hiatus of over two decades.
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The release of the 2025-26 NBA season schedule also yielded the release of national television schedules. NBC is back in the fold after over two decades away from hardwood air, set to broadcast games on both its traditional broadcast network and its streaming service Peacock.
This will be NBC’s third iteration of NBA broadcasting, its first running from 1954 through 1962 before returning from 1990 through 2002. The second iteration is still beloved by modern basketball fans, many of whom took in the Association’s turn of the century heyday on the broadcast network, including every iteration of the NBA Finals in that span. That run included all six championships of the Michael Jordan-run Chicago Bulls dynasty as well as the Los Angeles Lakers’ millennium-opening three-peat led by Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.
Modern champions open the modern NBA slate, which will also tip off the 2025-26 season as a whole on Oct. 21: the Oklahoma City Thunder will receive their championship rings before they face the Houston Rockets at Paycom Center. It’ll be Houston’s first game with former Thunder franchise face Kevin Durant leading the way after a big transactional swing this offseason. That game will be followed by a battle of long-running Californian champions, as Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors will pay a visit to LeBron James‘ Lakers at Crypto.com Arena.
Those games will open NBC’s “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” package, featuring a regional slate of high-profile showdowns. The Eastern and Central time zones will get a game at 8/7 p.m., respectively, while the Mountain and Pacific editions get another at 9/8 in turn. Both games will be available to stream in their entirety on Peacock.
NBC’s other major package emerges in the form of “Sunday Night Basketball,” which will tip off after the network’s NFL duties before its broadcast of Super Bowl LX. A preview emerges in the NFL’s week off between conference championship games and the Super Bowl in the form of the Lakers’ annual visit to Manhattan on Feb. 1, where they’ll take on the defending Eastern Conference finalist New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden.
Part one will be a doubleheader, as the Thunder will face the Denver Nuggets right after, creating a battle of recent MVPs in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokic. The Lakers will be back in the slot when the package returns three weeks later to run through the rest of the season, when they resume their lasting rivalry with the Boston Celtics in SoCal. Most games on the docket will also be broadcast in Spanish on NBC-owned Telemundo.
In addition to streaming simulcasts of all games on the broadcast network, Peacock will have its own day, broadcasting doubleheaders on Mondays. That slate opens with a battle of Eastern risers of Oct. 27, as the Cleveland Cavaliers visit the Detroit Pistons. Denver visits the defending conference finalist Minnesota Timberwolves later that night.
In terms of events, Peacock will air the Mexico City Game between the Pistons and Dallas Mavericks on Nov. 1, while a four-game tally is staged for the league’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration on January 19. Peacock will open the slate with a game between Milwaukee and Atlanta (King’s hometown), followed by a trio on the broadcast network (Oklahoma City-Cleveland, Dallas-New York, Boston-Detroit). The Nov. 25 “Coast 2 Coast” games just before Thanksgiving will also feature NBA Cup group play action between the Orlando Magic and the Philadelphia 76ers before the Lakers face a SoCal civil war with the Los Angeles Clippers in the late slot.
In addition to its expansive regular output, NBC will also carry most of NBA All-Star Weekend, as well as playoff contests. Such schedules will be released at a later date.
View the full slate of 2025-26 NBA games on peacock-branded networks below …
NBA on NBC 2025-26 Schedule
(All Times ET)
(Peacock exclusive games in italics)
Tuesday, October 21
