Two of the biggest days of the year in the NBA regular season are opening night and Christmas Day, and Friday we learned the matchups we will see on both nights, courtesy of ESPN’s Shams Charania.
Opening night schedule
The NBA will send the new-look Rockets, featuring Kevin Durant, to Oklahoma City for ring night to open the season, and then finish the night off with one more opening night tilt between LeBron James and Stephen Curry.
All four of those teams will also participate in the Christmas Day festivities, along with six other teams that get the honor of playing on the NBA’s biggest day.
Christmas Day schedule
The Knicks and Cavs matchup (presumably in the noon ET timeslot the Knicks host annually) will be the only game featuring Eastern Conference teams. That’s not a shock given the injuries to top teams in the East, but is a representation of how tilted the balance of power is — at least on paper — for the 2025-26 season.
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Victor Wembanyama once again gets a Christmas Day slot, this year against the reigning champs in OKC, while the Rockets will visit the Lakers. Cooper Flagg, Anthony Davis and the Mavs will head to the Bay to face Golden State, and Anthony Edwards and Nikola Jokic will face off in Denver in what figures to be the nightcap.
The biggest absence from the Christmas schedule is Boston, as the Celtics have played on Christmas Day every year since 2016, but were dropped this year with Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury costing him next season and after trading away Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis for what appears to be a gap year plan. In a normal year, the Pacers would’ve been a lock after making it to the Finals, but they too were passed over with Tyrese Haliburton also out for the season with an Achilles injury.
The Philadelphia 76ers and Phoenix Suns have also been regulars on Christmas, but with the Suns trading away Kevin Durant and the Sixers’ injuries and struggles last year, they’ve been dropped from the league’s biggest slate. The newcomers to the Christmas schedule who didn’t play in 2024 are the Rockets, Thunder and Cavaliers — OKC missing out on a Christmas game last year was probably the biggest miss by the league.
While it is West heavy, it’s a strong slate of games on paper and features a nice mixture of rising stars and the veterans who have been carrying the torch for decades. We’ll get the official schedule announcements for all 82 games soon enough, but for now fans can start looking ahead to two of the biggest days on the regular season schedule.