The NBA schedule is out.
The league dropped its full schedule — all 1,230 regular season NBA games — on Thursday. There’s a lot of ground to cover, including who are the schedule winners and losers — the Suns and Clippers have a brutal October and November — but we know the games to circle on the calendar.
Here are 20 must-watch NBA Games this season.
• Oct. 22: New York at Boston. Ring night for the Celtics. But if there is any championship hangover, the Knicks — the second-best team in the East last season, one that added Mikal Bridges and is built to challenge Boston — are lurking and looking to announce themselves with authority.
• Oct. 23: Phoenix at Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers open their new Intuit dome and bring in Olympians Kevin Durant and Devin Booker to do it. Kawhi Leonard trying to lock down Kevin Durant is always quality basketball.
• Oct. 25: Oklahoma City at Chicago. Alex Caruso makes his return to Chicago, a team that is going to dearly miss his defense. Expect Caruso to get a lot of love from the Bulls faithful. Also, the Bulls clearly forgot to bribe the schedule makers, because for Chicago this home game is the second night of a back-to-back after having played Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks the night before. Brutal opening week for Chicago.
• Oct. 25: Indiana at New York. The last time these two teams met, it was in the second round of the playoffs, and the Pacers handled a banged-up Knicks team. This time, New York should be healthy, has Bridges, and wants to get off to a fast start, while the Pacers want everyone to know last season was not a fluke.
• Nov. 2: Miami vs. Washington in Mexico City. The NBA’s annual Mexico City game will highlight the Heat’s Mexican-American Jaime Jaquez Jr. Why we are asking the good people of Mexico City to watch the Wizards is another question entirely.
• Nov. 6: Boston at Golden State. Do you think that Jayson Tatum — glued to the bench much more than he wanted during the Olympics — and Jaylen Brown (not even invited to Paris) want to show Steve Kerr exactly how good they are and what a mistake he made?
• Nov. 6: Philadelphia at Los Angeles Clippers. Paul George returns to Los Angeles to see his old team and their new building. There was some bad blood between PG13 and the front office during negotiations, but don’t expect Clippers fans to feel that way.
• Nov. 12: Dallas at Golden State. Klay Thompson makes his return to the Bay Area in another uniform — and also the start of the NBA Cup (formerly called the In-Season Tournament).
• Nov. 19: Oklahoma City at San Antonio. Victor Wembanyama vs. Chet Holmgren is one of the NBA’s great budding rivalries and is always worth watching. This is not the first meeting of the teams this season (they play in OKC on Oct. 30 first), but this one is part of the NBA Cup, so it has a little more on the line.
• Dec. 2: New Orleans at Atlanta. Dejounte Murray returns to Atlanta for the first time to take on the Hawks. Will Murray have better backcourt chemistry with CJ McCollum than he did with Trae Young? The Pelicans are betting on it.
• Dec. 17: NBA Cup Finals. The Lakers won a season ago but are in the same group as the Thunder and Suns, so only one team likely will advance (maybe two with the wild card). If not the Lakers, which two teams are in Las Vegas for this showdown?
• Dec. 25: San Antonio at New York. Victor Wembanyama makes his Christmas debut for the NBA — expect that tradition to continue for at least a decade — and does so in Madison Square Garden against a feisty Knicks team. This is going to be better than that tie your kids got you.
• Dec. 25: Philadelphia at Boston. Best game on the Christmas Day schedule. By this point the 76ers should have found some chemistry with Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey, and they take on the defending champion Celtics. This is appointment viewing.
• Jan. 12: Sacramento at Chicago. DeMar DeRozan makes his return to Chicago with his new team, the Kings (who should be a dangerous regular season team in the West). Chicago is likely swimming in.
Jan. 19: Los Angeles Lakers at Los Angeles Clippers. One of the reasons Steve Ballmer spent pocket change for him a couple of billion dollars to build the Intuit Dome was to give his franchise a clear identity and home-court advantage. That said, Los Angeles is a Lakers town at its core. What percentage of the crowd for this first meeting between the teams are Lakers fans, even in the Clippers’ fancy new building?
• Jan. 20: Minnesota at Memphis. Two years ago, the Grizzlies were everybody’s favorite team on the rise in the West, led by Ja Morant. Last season the Grizzlies stumbled because of suspensions and injuries, and the Timberwolves — behind Anthony Edwards and a lock-down defense led by Rudy Gobert — became a team on the rise. Who is the team to fear this season in the West ... or is it both of them?
• Jan. 21: New York at Brooklyn. Mikal Bridges’ homecoming game in Brooklyn, although it lacks a little luster because it’s a $3 and nine-minute subway ride from Madison Square Garden to the Barclays Center. Plus, we know every Nets home game against the Knicks sounds like it were at MSG anyway.
• Jan. 21: Philadelphia at Denver. This is another potentially great matchup—but will Joel Embiid play in Denver for the first time since 2019? If so, Embiid vs. Nikola Jokic is a fun showdown we got a taste of during the Olympics but want more of.
• Feb. 6: Dallas at Boston. A rematch of the NBA Finals, with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving looking for a cathartic win on the parquet. (These teams also meet Jan. 25 in Dallas.)
• April 4: Dallas at Los Angeles Clippers. These teams are destined to meet in the playoffs again, right? It’s happened three times in the past five years, it’s nearly an annual tradition. Plus, Kawhi Leonard guarding Luka Doncic for key stretches of the game will be must-watch.
Just a couple of other dates of note for the NBA season:
• The Play-In Tournament is April 15-18.
• The NBA Playoffs start April 19.
• The NBA Finals 2025 start Thursday, June 5.
