The Boston Celtics will get their NBA championship rings on Oct. 22, and the rival New York Knicks will be there for the celebration.
The league’s 2024-25 schedule was released Thursday, and the season-opening matchup has the Knicks visiting Boston as the Celtics reveal the championship banner for the franchise’s record-setting 18th NBA title. Boston capped the 2023-24 season by beating the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals in mid-June, winning the best-of-seven series in five games and breaking free of the Los Angeles Lakers for the most titles in league history.
The second game on opening night has the Minnesota Timberwolves visiting the Lakers, a reunion of Olympic gold medalists for the U.S. men’s basketball team from the recent Paris Games as the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards faces off against the Lakers’ LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
The league released 1,200 of the 1,230 games on the schedule Thursday; the other 30 will be slotted in December, depending on how teams fare during the NBA Cup. The schedule for those in-season tournament games was released Tuesday.
Some regular-season contests outside of the NBA Cup had been previously announced, such as the Miami Heat and Washington Wizards playing in Mexico City on Nov. 2, as well as the Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs playing two games in Paris on Jan. 23 and 25, with the main attraction being Spurs star and France native Victor Wembanyama, now not only the reigning NBA rookie of the year but an Olympic silver medalist.
Here are some more highlights to the NBA’s schedule for what will be its 79th season.
Five golden games
The Spurs visit the Knicks to start the Christmas Day quintupleheader, followed by the Timberwolves visiting the Mavericks, the Philadelphia 76ers visiting the Celtics, the Lakers visiting the Golden State Warriors and the Denver Nuggets visiting the Phoenix Suns. It will be the first Christmas game for the Spurs since 2016 and the first for the Timberwolves since 2017. The Milwaukee Bucks won’t play on Dec. 25 for the first time in seven seasons.
Everybody plays
There are four nights this season where all 30 teams will be in action, starting with Nov. 4, when a new game will start every 15 minutes from 7 p.m. through 10:30 p.m. Eastern. The other dates when all teams are playing: Feb. 12, April 11 (the second-to-last day of the regular season) and April 13 (the last day of the regular season).
Nobody plays
For the third consecutive year, Election Day — Nov. 5 in this case — will not have any NBA games, with the league saying it wants to “continue to encourage fans and the broader NBA community to make a plan to vote and participate in the civic process. As part of this initiative, the NBA will share important resources from voting organizations and highlight the civic engagement work of teams in their markets.”
Other leaguewide off days for the NBA this season: Nov. 28 (Thanksgiving), Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve), Feb. 17-19 (the break after NBA All-Star Game weekend, which starts Feb. 14) and April 12. There will likely be one other dark day in December, depending on how the schedules are set for those teams that do not make the NBA Cup semifinals.
MLK Day slate
There are seven games on Jan. 20 as part of the league’s annual celebration of the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., with the Mavericks visiting the Charlotte Hornets, the Detroit Pistons visiting the Houston Rockets, the Timberwolves visiting the Memphis Grizzlies, the Atlanta Hawks visiting the Knicks, the Suns visiting the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Celtics visiting the Warriors, and the Utah Jazz visiting the New Orleans Pelicans. Memphis, where the civil rights pioneer was assassinated in 1968, will host a game on the holiday for the 22nd time in 23 seasons.
Back to school
Kevin Durant could play at least one more game at his college home. The Spurs will play two games in Austin, Texas, again this season: Feb. 20 against Durant and the Suns, then Feb. 21 against the Pistons. Durant played his one college season at Texas, and he had 30 points in his home finale as a member of the Longhorns on Feb. 28, 2007. That schedule means the Pistons won’t be going to San Antonio this season. The Pistons have just one win in their past 14 trips to the Spurs’ home arena.
Personal holiday
This season will be the 22nd in the NBA for James, tying Vince Carter for the league’s longevity record, and he gets his 40th birthday off. The Lakers don’t play on Dec. 30. They’re at home on Dec. 28 against the Sacramento Kings (his first NBA opponent, when he was just 18) and then off until a home game Dec. 31 against the Cavaliers (his first NBA team). James is 5-5 in birthday games, so he’ll have to play a 23rd season if he wants a chance to break .500 on his big day.
Dome sweet home
The first official game inside the Intuit Dome, the new home of the Los Angeles Clippers, is Oct. 23 when they take on the Suns. The Clippers have shared an arena with the Lakers since the 1999-2000 season. It wasn’t terribly uncommon for the Clippers and Lakers to play home games on the same day — one would play in the afternoon, then the other at night after the court was swapped out and the building quickly cleaned. There will be at least eight dates this season where the Clippers and Lakers are both playing at home, and all but one of them will feature simultaneous games: Jan. 11, Jan. 13, Jan. 15, Jan. 21, Feb. 6, Feb. 8, March 18 and April 4.
NFL takes over
Once again, the NBA will be done for the day long before kickoff of the Super Bowl. There are three games on Feb. 9, the day of the NFL’s title game: the Hornets visit the Pistons at 1 p.m., while the Toronto Raptors visit the Rockets at 2 and the 76ers visit the Bucks at the same time. Kickoff time for the Super Bowl is typically around 6:30 p.m. Eastern.
Finals rematches
The Celtics visit the Mavericks on Jan. 25 in the first rematch this season of last season’s NBA Finals. The Mavericks visit the Celtics on Feb. 6. This is the seventh consecutive season in which there won’t be an NBA Finals rematch on Dec. 25. There had been a Christmas rematch of the previous season’s title series in five of the seven seasons before that.
No. 1 faces No. 1
The two games between the teams with the most recent overall No. 1 draft picks — Wembanyama for the Spurs and Zaccharie Risacher for the Hawks — will be nationally televised. The games will be Dec. 19 in San Antonio on TNT, then Feb. 5 in Atlanta on ESPN. Both players are natives of France.
NCAA competition
It’s been an unofficial tradition that the day of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship game is an off day in the NBA. That won’t be the case this year, with the Kings visiting the Pistons while the 76ers visit the Heat on April 7. The men’s Final Four this year is in San Antonio, but the Spurs won’t be going. They’ll host the Cavaliers on April 4, the day before the national semifinals, then head out on a road trip.
The last day
Every regular-season finale on April 13 is set to start at either 1 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. Eastern. Every team will take on an opponent from its own conference, with the exception of the Raptors visiting the Spurs.
Into the summer
Game 1 of the NBA Finals will be June 5. That means — if the schedule is shaped as it has been in recent years — Game 2 is likely on June 8, Game 3 on June 11, Game 4 on June 13, and — if necessary — Game 5 on June 16, Game 6 on June 19, and Game 7 on June 22.
