NBA Schedule 2024-25

Image courtesy - NBA Instagram account

The National Basketball League, better known as the NBA, is the premier basketball league on the planet. This league operated in the United States after the sport was invented by a Canadian-American educator and physician named James Naismith.

This league came into existence on June 6, 1946, in New York City and the recently concluded 2023-24 season was its 78th iteration. The NBA consists of 30 teams out of which 29 are located in the United States and only 1 is in Canada. The most successful franchises in NBA history is the Boston Celtics, with 18 titles and the Los Angeles Lakers have won 17 titles. Let us delve deeper and have a look at the NBA Schedule 2024-25.

Introduction to the NBA Schedule

The NBA features some of the best players to have ever touched a basketball and the league is also the single most reason for globally popularizing the sport to the level it has reached today. All over the world, more and more players from various countries have started playing the game at a much higher level and several clubs outside of the United States have started producing quality players.

The NBA consists of 30 teams which are divided into two conferences, namely, the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. To have a fully functional regular season followed by a postseason to determine one Champion from so many teams, a properly planned NBA schedule.

Before the start of the regular season, the NBA game schedule is set up in such a way that all teams will play in the pre-season where they can start getting ready for the grueling months ahead. Once the preseason is over and all teams are raring to go, the long regular season gets underway as teams work their tails off in trying to reach the playoffs. The postseason possesses a different type of challenge altogether but any team that wants to win the coveted NBA title has to smartly navigate their way through it.

Before the regular season winds up and teams start pushing for a playoff berth, there is the mid-season break which features the All-Star Game and other smaller events.

NBA 2024-25 Season Overview

The NBA season is a long and tiring one for the players and coaching staff. Starting from the beginning of October is the preseason which comes to an end by the third week of the month. The regular season starts from the final week of October and runs till mid-April following which the postseason starts. The final two teams battling it out for the Championship will continue playing till the second or third week of June making it a very hectic NBA schedule.

In the 2024–25 NBA season, we will see the second edition of the highly popular NBA In-Season tournament, and it will take place from the start of November and will continue for nearly one month. All games from this tournament except for the tournament championship game will be included as part of the regular season. The regular season for the 2024–25 season will start on October 22, 2023, as the defending champions, the Boston Celtics take on New York Knicks, in the first game.

The All-Star break is scheduled to run from February 14 to 21, 2025, with the All-Star Game to be played on February 16, 2024. Mark your calendars for the postseason as it gets underway on April 19, 2024, and will go on till the second or third week of June.

NBA Regular Season Schedule

Making an NBA schedule for 30 different teams in a league where each team has to play 82 games is not an easy task for sure. To make it work, there needs to be some sort of fixed process around which the nitty gritty of the NBA game schedule can revolve. Therefore, the NBA has come up with the following formula around which the entire regular season is structured. The league also releases an NBA TV Schedule, which gives the fans all the broadcasting details.

First and foremost, before we get into the structure of the NBA schedule 2024-25, it is important to understand how the teams are divided. So, the 30 teams are mainly divided into two conferences of 15 teams each and they are known as the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference. As the names suggest, the Eastern Conference consists of all the teams on the Eastern side of the country. As for the Western Conference, only about eight teams fall on the west side of the country, while the remaining seven are more or less in the middle.

The 15 teams are then further divided into three divisions of five teams each from both conferences. That means there are a total of six divisions with five teams each. The Eastern Conference is divided into the Atlantic, Central, and Southeast divisions, while the Western Conference is further classified into the Northwest, Pacific, and Southwest divisions.

As every franchise plays 82 regular season games, each team gets to play 41 games at home and 41 games on the road. Thus, the NBA schedules each team’s opponents in the following manner:

1. Each team will play all the other four teams within their division four times a year which makes 16 games.
2. Each team will play six teams from the other two divisions of the same conference four times a year, making that 24 games. Each team will also play the remaining four teams within the same conference a total of three times making that 12 more games.
3. The remaining 30 games will be played against all 15 teams from the other conference twice annually bringing the total to 82 games per season.

Conference and Division teams breakup

NBA Playoffs Schedule

The NBA playoffs consist of 16 of the 30 teams and feature 8 from each conference. The top 6 teams from each conference get a guaranteed spot, irrespective of their divisions. The final two spots are settled via a Play-In Tournament featuring the teams that finished 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th in their respective conferences. The top two teams from both conferences after the play-in tournament join the previous six teams to complete the playoff bracket.

The playoffs are all best of seven knockout rounds starting with the First Round which is played between seeds 1 and 8, 2 and 7, 3 and 6, and seeds 4 and 5 respectively. The winner moves on to the Conference Semifinals Round as only 8 teams remain. This is followed by the Conference Finals Round which features 4 teams and the NBA Finals which is between the last two teams that are still standing.