By BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer
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 LA 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 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 his decision. 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.
The NBA’s career scoring leader said it would be the Sixers about a week later, joining a team that already had acquired All-Star Jaylen Brown from Boston and is expected to be one of the top challengers for the Knicks’ title.
James will play his first home game in Philadelphia on Oct. 22 against Cleveland, one of his former teams that hoped to get the 41-year-old Ohio native back for a third time. That will be part of an ESPN doubleheader preceding Denver visiting Oklahoma City.
Minnesota visits Miami to highlight the schedule on Oct. 21, when most teams will open their seasons. The Heat acquired two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo from Milwaukee — and tried to bring James back as well — and the Timberwolves traded for flashy point guard LaMelo Ball. Golden State then faces the Lakers to cap that ESPN doubleheader.
The Spurs are also a top draw now behind Wembanyama, the NBA Defensive Player of the Year who helped San Antonio win Game 7 of the West finals in Oklahoma City to end the Thunder’s title reign.
This will be his second time playing at Madison Square Garden on Christmas, after he delivered a massive 42-point, 18-rebound performance in 2024 in a loss in his first time playing on the holiday. This matchup will be his first time back on the court in New York since the Knicks set an NBA Finals record by rallying from 29 points down for a 107-106 victory in Game 4. They won the title in San Antonio in the next game.
San Antonio will face Houston and former Longhorns star Kevin Durant in a game at the University of Texas on Oct. 23 airing on Prime Video, the back of a doubleheader starting with the Knicks at the Celtics.
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