NBA commissioner Adam Silver was surprisingly honest about the league waiting on this summer’s marquee free agent, all-time leading scorer LeBron James, to sign before getting to work on the 2026-27 regular-season schedule.
“Where LeBron plays will affect the schedule,” Silver said in July. “So I would like him to make his announcement already, so we can finish the schedule, because, as you might imagine, the teams are calling us, the networks are calling us, and everybody wants to lock in the schedule. But it will influence how we set the schedule, how we set opening week, Christmas Day, etc.”
True to his word, after James elected to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers for his 24th season as a professional, the schedule-makers got to work. Philly’s presence was felt strongly on two of the NBA’s marquee game slates, Opening Night and Christmas Day, when the Sixers will face the reigning champion New York Knicks and James’ previous team, the Los Angeles Lakers, respectively.
In fact, in light of James’ signing, the 76ers have the maximum allotment of nationally broadcast games via the current collective bargaining agreement at 34, where the Spurs, Lakers, and Knicks join them.
Every NBA team’s national TV / streaming games in 2026-27
LeBron and Wemby get bumped up to the max 34 games, joining the Knicks and Lakers pic.twitter.com/yLHU08k1t1
— Lev Akabas (@LevAkabas) August 13, 2026
On the other end of the spectrum, the Brooklyn Nets, Memphis Grizzlies, Milwaukee Bucks, New Orleans Pelicans, and Sacramento Kings, all teams stuck in a sort of basketball purgatory, have two nationally broadcast games each.
Most teams fall somewhere in the middle, with the presumptive playoff contenders — Thunder, Nuggets, Warriors, Celtics, Timberwolves, and Heat — predictably tending to have more national games. In total, the NBA will air 90 games on over-the-air television in 2026 across NBC, ABC/ESPN, Prime Video, and NBA TV, up from 79 last year.
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