The NBA Finals schedule will be noticeably different this year, with no Sunday games for the first time in 56 years.
The NBA announced Tuesday that the NBA Finals will begin on Wednesday, June 3, with a potential Game 7 scheduled for Friday, June 19, a shift from the usual Thursday start and Sunday finish. The schedule includes zero Sunday games, a first for any NBA Finals since 1970. (There were no Sunday games in the 1999 Finals, but that is because San Antonio won the series before a potential Sunday night Game 6.) Even in the fall 2020 COVID bubble, Finals games took place on two NFL Sundays.
It also includes a potential Game 5 on a Saturday night — just the second Finals game since 1981 that is scheduled for the least-watched night of the week. The 2021 Bucks-Suns NBA Finals, which took place a month out of season due to COVID, also had a Saturday night Game 5.
A league source confirmed that the changes are in response to the FIFA World Cup, which is taking place primarily in the United States this summer. The United States plays its first game in primetime on Friday, June 12, a night on which the NBA would have typically played Game 4 of the NBA Finals. The USMNT is also scheduled to play the following Friday, which coincides with a potential Game 7 under the new schedule, but their matchup with Australia that day is set for the mid-afternoon.
The Finals schedule may have been due for revision anyway, as this is the first season of a new media rights deal that will presumably require additional changes to the long-standing rhythm of the playoffs. Save for the lockout season of 2012 and the two COVID years of 2020 and 2021, the NBA has largely had the same playoff scheduling matrix in place since the 2005 postseason. The league evaluates its schedule every year, the source said.
The NBA Finals has begun on a Thursday every year dating back to 2005, except for the aforementioned three years and 2011 — the last time the league opted to move up the start of the Finals because the conference finals ended early. Starting in 2016, the league built in two travel days between game sites, resulting in the Thursday-Sunday-Wednesday-Friday-Monday-Thursday-Sunday schedule that had become the norm.
The first and last Finals of that scheduling format — Cavaliers-Warriors in 2016 and Thunder-Pacers this past season — were the only ones to go the full seven games, spanning a full 18 days. This year’s schedule will be one day shorter by eliminating the extra off day between games one and two.
At least for this coming year, the NBA Finals joins the World Series in abandoning Sunday — the most-watched night of the week. It should be noted that this past year’s World Series was a viewership success despite four of seven games taking place on the two least-watched nights of the week, including the first Saturday Game 7 since 1931.
