The NBA schedule for the 2024-25 season was officially released Thursday with games across multiple platforms, including one that will no longer hold the rights to games following the completion of the season. To no one’s surprise, the Los Angeles Lakers led the way with 33 nationally televised appearances for the upcoming season, meaning that 40 percent of the team’s games will be nationally syndicated.
As it stands, LeBron James and the Lakers have 11 games on TNT, 12 on NBA TV and 10 more on ABC and ESPN. But there’s an important caveat and nugget to that number. The NBA, which has had to deal with too many instances of “load management,” has instituted something new to the schedule, particularly for primetime matchups.
According to Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press, NBA teams will not play the day before or after “high-profile national TV games” this season. This seems like the league’s best option to combat James or Anthony Davis missing a top-flight regular season matchup against the Golden State Warriors or Denver Nuggets. But it’s not just the Lakers.
The NBA schedule is out. A couple nuggets:
– Average back-to-backs: 14.9. Up from last year, down 23% from a decade ago.
– No 4-in-5-nights, no 8-in-12-nights, no 18-in-30-nights.
– Teams won’t play the day before or the day after “high-profile national TV games” this season.
— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) August 15, 2024
That type of scheduling also has other stars in mind. We’ve seen Joel Embiid, who, to be fair, has dealt with numerous lingering injuries, be held out of primetime matchups on National TV against Nikola Jokić and the Nuggets. This at least provides some cushion and a bigger floor from preventing instances of a nationally televised game not featuring some of the game’s biggest stars.
While this new scheduling rule is a step in the right direction, the NBA still faces an uphill battle in guaranteeing fans will see their favorite superstars consistently on national television. We’ll likely need an entire season of results before determining if this is a sustainable solution to one of the league’s biggest issues.
