• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 4 hours ago

NBCU will start its new season of NBA games with an unprecedented triple-header on a Tuesday night.

The three-in-a-row schedule is a first for an NBA season tip-off on network TV (plus co-owned Peacock).

Even more unprecedented is the scheduling of the games from 3 p.m. Eastern to approximately midnight -- nine hours -- on a Tuesday.

This is the most standout feature of the announcement from NBC Sports that came out Monday. 

A schedule such as this one turns Tuesday into as big a sports day on TV as a typical Sunday.

Double- and triple-headers of marquee sports such as the NBA have long been a staple of Sunday afternoon sports programming -- sometimes stretching into the evening hours during playoff season.

In its first season last fall under its current NBA rights deal, NBC initiated regular Tuesday-night NBA games, effectively jettisoning traditional prime-time programming on Tuesday nights. 

NBCUniversal’s NBA rights deal runs for 10 more seasons. The deal reportedly cost the company $2.5 billion a season -- $27 billion in all. 

The triple-header on Tuesday, October 20 -- which is opening night for the NBA season -- represents NBCU’s intention to air as many prime-time NBA games as its rights deal permits.

Billed as the “American Express Tip-Off,” NBC’s lineup represents a premiere trio of opening-day matchups.

The first game at 3 p.m. Eastern will be a matchup of two Eastern Conference rivals, the Boston Celtics vs. the Detroit Pistons at Detroit.

Game 2, scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m., will pit the NBA champion New York Knicks against the new-look Philadelphia 76ers from Madison Square Garden.

The game between these traditional Eastern Division rivals will be the nation’s first look at the new 76ers starting lineup of new Sixer superstars LeBron James and Jaylen Brown, along with returning Sixers stars Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe.

That game will be preceded at 7 p.m. by a half-hour ceremony in which the Knicks’ 2025-26 championship banner will be hoisted to the Madison Square Garden rafters.

The third game, scheduled to start at 9:30 p.m. Eastern from San Antonio, will be a matchup of last spring’s Western Conference finals in which the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder lost to the San Antonio Spurs in seven games.

NBCU’s NBA deal includes co-owned Peacock, which also carries the NBC games live, and has its own slate of live NBA games on Mondays.

NBCU’s commitment to the NBA includes “Sunday Night Basketball” games starting after the conclusion of the NFL season when the basketball games replace “NBC Sunday Night Football.”

To recap: NBC has NFL games every Sunday night during the regular season, plus some prime-time games on selected weekday evenings during the season.

The network has NBA games all season long on Tuesday nights, and in addition, it has the second half of the NBA season on Sunday nights.

To do all of this sports programming, NBC has done away with traditional prime-time programming on both Tuesday and Sunday nights, not to mention forcing affiliates’ late-night newscasts into the wee hours of the morning. 

That leaves the network with 15 hours of traditional prime-time programming per week (out of the maximum 21 hours).

While there is still more entertainment programming on NBC than sports, it can often seem as if NBC has morphed into a sports network, especially when seasons overlap as the NFL and NBA do in the fall.