The NBA is scheduled to cram nearly five weeks of nationally televised games into two upon its planned resumption of play next month.
ESPN, ABC, TNT and NBA TV are scheduled to broadcast a combined 52 regular season NBA “seeding games” during the league’s planned resumption of play at Walt Disney World next month, slightly below the 54 telecasts left on the schedule when the season was halted on March 11. The schedule was announced Friday.
TNT is scheduled for 18 games, up from 14 when the season was halted. ESPN is scheduled for 17, up from 12. On the flip side, ABC is set to carry one less game than on the original schedule (three instead of four) and NBA TV ten fewer (14 instead of 24).
TNT would carry the first games of the restart, Jazz-Pelicans and Clippers-Lakers on Thursday, July 30. NBA TV and ESPN are to begin their coverage the following day, the former airing Grizzlies-Blazers and the latter Celtics-Bucks and Rockets-Mavericks. ABC would open Sunday, August 2 with Blazers-Celtics in the afternoon and Bucks-Rockets in primetime, followed by Spurs-Pelicans the following Sunday.
With all games in one Eastern time zone location, no telecast is scheduled to begin after 9 PM ET. There will be weekday afternoon games throughout the remainder of the regular season, which is scheduled to end August 14, with most of those on NBA TV or not televised at all.
TNT has weekday afternoon games on August 6 (Heat-Bucks) and 13 (tbd) and ESPN has one on August 14, with all three set to begin at 4 PM ET.
Other notable items on the schedule include an ESPN quadrupleheader on Saturday, August 1. The full TV schedule for the NBA’s planned restart is available here.
[News from NBA PR]
