NEW YORK (AP) — LeBron James will visit the New York Knicks on opening night and the Los Angeles Lakers on Christmas.
James' arrival in Philadelphia has made the 76ers must-see TV, and they are all over the NBA's biggest days of the season.
James will make his 76ers debut against the NBA champion Knicks on Oct. 20. The game at Madison Square Garden will be part of a tripleheader, when the Knicks raise a banner to celebrate their first championship since
1973 and James then kicks off the final stop in his career.
He will return to face the Lakers on Christmas, after Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs are back in New York for an NBA Finals rematch to open a five-game schedule.
The NBA unveiled those games Tuesday morning as what it called a “sneak peek” at the 2026-27 schedule. The full schedule will be released Thursday.
The season begins with the Boston Celtics visiting Detroit in a rare 3 p.m. EDT start for a midweek game. The tripleheader is capped by the Spurs hosting Oklahoma City in a rematch of the Western Conference finals.
Those three games — opening night traditionally has featured two in recent years — will all be televised by NBC. ESPN then has all five games on Christmas.
That schedule: San Antonio at New York, Miami at Boston, Philadelphia at Los Angeles, Oklahoma City at Minnesota, and Denver at Golden State.
James’ new team was always going to have a prominent place on the schedule, so the NBA struggled to put the puzzle together while waiting for him. Commissioner Adam Silver even said last month that he wanted James to announce his decision because teams and networks were calling to ask when the schedule would be completed.
James said it would be the 76ers about a week later, joining a team that had already acquired All-Star Jaylen Brown from Boston and will be one of the top challengers for the Knicks' title.
James will play his first game in Philadelphia on Oct. 22 against Cleveland, one of his former teams that hoped to get him back for a third time. That will be part of an ESPN doubleheader preceding Denver visiting Oklahoma City.
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