NBA National TV Schedule to Feature Well-Rested Young Stars
In the 2024 Olympic men’s basketball tournament, the older generation of NBA stars shone brightest—LeBron James won MVP, Stephen Curry was Team USA’s leading scorer in the final two games, and Kevin Durant made countless clutch shots.
The NBA, however, which released its full 2024-25 season schedule on Thursday, has chosen to highlight its younger stars on national television more this year, while scaling back visibility for some of its aging stalwarts.
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The Minnesota Timberwolves received the biggest spike in number of appearances on ESPN, ABC or TNT with 18 next season, up from only five last year. Anthony Edwards, just 22 years old last season, had a breakout postseason, averaging 27.6 points per game and leading the Wolves to their first playoff series wins since 2004.
The Indiana Pacers, headlined by 24-year-old Tyrese Haliburton, will be on the national stage nine times in 2024-25 versus just once last year, when they made a surprise trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. Victor Wembanyama’s San Antonio Spurs will get a slight boost to 13 games—no other team projected to win fewer than 40 games got more than two.
Keeping with the theme, the Oklahoma City Thunder, whose entire starting five are members of Gen Z, were bumped up from eight prime TV spots to 15. That’s the 11th most in the league—but arguably fewer games than they “deserve” based on their projected 56.5 wins, which ranks second.
Meanwhile, Curry’s Golden State Warriors got 24 national TV appearances (down from 29) and Durant’s Phoenix Suns will be on 19 times (down from 25). The two teams featuring 34-year-old superstars Jimmy Butler (Miami) and James Harden (LA Clippers) each got their totals slashed as well. The exception to the rule is James’ Los Angeles Lakers, which lead the league with 29 despite being expected to finish around .500.
James, who turns 40 in December, will certainly benefit from a new scheduling policy ensuring that teams in “high-profile national TV games” won’t play the day before or after those games. This is part of the NBA’s ongoing battle against “load management,” or stars sitting out games to rest, especially when it occurs in big matchups. Last year, the introduction of the league’s Player Participation Policy coincided with a more than 10% reduction in missed games by stars.
The NBA’s war against back-to-back games, however, is stuck in the trenches. The average team will play 14.9 pairs of consecutive games next season, according to Positive Residual. That number is significantly down from 19.3 a decade ago, but it has essentially remained flat since the 2017-18 season, and it's unclear if any more progress can be made on that front. The season is only so long, and 82 games need to be played.
Similarly, matchups in which one of the two teams is at a rest disadvantage have remained fairly steady in each of the past five full-length seasons. Travel, too, has flattened after the NBA’s successful efforts to decrease it between 2019 and 2023.
Schedule release day has recently become more of an event for U.S. sports leagues, with NFL teams especially rushing to capitalize with ticket sales and social media engagement. In that regard, the big winner Thursday was the Phoenix Suns, despite their diminished national TV spotlight. The Suns’ Twitter thread poking fun at other teams’ fan bases had 3.3 million views on the platform as of 9 a.m. ET on Friday. No other franchise came close to cracking 1 million.
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