The first NBA game on NBC in 23 years will feature the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder against perhaps their chief competition in the West, and the Cleveland Cavaliers are back on Christmas Day for the first time since the LeBron James era, league and network sources confirmed to The Athletic on Friday.
The Rockets, who finished second in the West last season and traded for Kevin Durant, will play the Thunder on ring night on Oct. 21 — as is tradition in the NBA — followed by the Golden State Warriors at the Los Angeles Lakers.
This coming season is the first of an 11-year, $75 billion national TV contract for the NBA, which features a new partnership with Amazon and a reuniting of the league with NBC. ESPN and ABC remain partners — and will carry Christmas Day games per usual — while TNT is no longer a league partner.
ESPN was the first to report NBC’s opening night slate as well as the five Christmas Day games, which are:
Cleveland at the New York Knicks
San Antonio at Oklahoma City
Houston at the Lakers
Dallas at Golden State
Minnesota at Denver.
The Cavs finished first in the East in the 2024-25 season and have developed a rivalry with the Knicks. The team that beat them both in the playoffs last season — the Indiana Pacers — lost star point guard Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, and they did not re-sign center Myles Turner in free agency.
The Spurs should have star Victor Wembanyama back from his blood clot that cost him the end of last season. Depending on what he decides career-wise, this could be LeBron’s last Christmas game, and the Timberwolves and Nuggets played each other on Christmas last season.
The Cavs last played on Christmas in 2017, in an NBA Finals rematch against the Warriors.
Cleveland and New York are the only two East teams playing on Christmas, in no small part due to injuries to stars on other teams. Not only is Haliburton out for the Pacers this season, but Celtics star Jayson Tatum will not play due to a torn Achilles — a likely factor in Boston not appearing on the league’s marquee day in the regular season.
The NBA will face competition from the NFL again on Christmas Day. Last year, it had to face off against two football games; this year, there will 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 those games will be streamed — the first two on Netflix and the latter on Amazon — so the NBA will have linear television all to itself.
Last year’s Christmas Day games did not lack viewers. It was the most viewed slate of games in five years, according to Nielsen, averaging 5.34 million viewers.
The Lakers-Warriors prime-time game averaged a combined 7.91 million viewers between ESPN and ABC. It was a hearty number for the NBA.
(Photo: Angela Weiss /AFP via Getty Images)
