NBA Streams: Live Games and Schedule

The 2026-27 NBA season

The preseason is under way. Opening night is Tuesday, October 20, and NBC has all three games: the Celtics visit the Pistons at 3:00 PM ET, the 76ers play the Knicks in New York at 7:00 PM ET, and the Thunder visit the Spurs at 9:30 PM ET. The next night has 11 games, ending with Golden State at the Lakers at 10:00 PM ET on ESPN. In the first seven days, October 20 to 26, the league plays 52 games.

Each team plays 82 regular-season games, spread over roughly six months. The NBA Cup is folded into that schedule, with its group games on set nights in November that also count in the standings. The regular season ends in April, then come the play-in and the playoffs, with the Finals in June.

How the NBA page is laid out

Games are grouped by day for the next week, in tip-off order. A typical NBA night opens with East Coast tip-offs around 7 PM ET and moves west, so the final game often starts after 10 PM ET in Los Angeles, Portland or Sacramento. Weekend afternoons add earlier starts now and then. A game in progress shows a LIVE badge and goes to the top of its day.

We write every tip-off in Eastern Time; your browser then shows it in your local time. A Lakers home game at 10:00 PM ET becomes 7:00 PM in California and, for most of the season, 3:00 AM the following morning in London, which is worth knowing before you set an alarm.

During the preseason the page lists the exhibition games too. Those often rest the stars or play them for a half, so check the news if you are tuning in for one player.

What an NBA game page shows

Click a game and you get its page: both teams, the tip-off time and, during play, a live score. The feed list is below it. The Main row is the feed we chose for that game; Core, Vector, Nexus and Vertex rows are other channels with numbered mirrors. Feeds tend to appear in the last 30 minutes before tip-off, and the open page keeps adding them.

Players load in a separate tab, and the game page waits behind it. If one feed lags behind the play-by-play, go back and try the next row.

Tips for following a season

• Back-to-backs matter. Teams often rest a starter when they play on consecutive nights, so if you are tuning in for one player, look at the team news that afternoon.
• On a busy Wednesday or Friday with 11 or 12 games, open the pages you want before tip-off and keep them in tabs.
• West Coast games end after midnight ET. If you are in Europe, those are the ones to save for a weekend morning.
• When a game goes to overtime the page keeps the LIVE badge until the final buzzer, so the row stays at the top.

Related pages

For the full first week night by night, including the Spurs game in Austin on October 23, see our NBA opening week guide. Hockey shares most of those nights on the NHL page, and the home page gathers today's games from every sport.