So, with a couple of months before tip-off, the NBA released its full 2025-26 regular season schedule, featuring Opening Night matchups and NBA Cup games along with the five-game Christmas Day slate as well. With new broadcast windows for its newest media partners in Amazon Prime Video and NBC, the NBA has prepared millions of fans nationwide for the return of basketball on the big stage, coming in late October. With this schedule release, one of the most celebrated franchises in league history also has its full schedule available for the 2025-26 season. The Los Angeles Lakers are seeking a bounce back season after a couple of years in a row of being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs and they have some new pieces around their biggest star players in LeBron James and Luka Doncic to improve the roster. Now that the schedule has been released for the whole association, the Purple & Gold must grind through a Western Conference that has gotten tougher to compete in over the years with young stars rising up to lead new championship-contending caliber rosters. The Lakers schedule, along with the new primetime scheduling windows that they will be featured in occasionally, will be analyzed below.

Firstly, on opening night, the Lakers will open up with a home game against the Golden State Warriors, who still have their old stars in Stephen Curry and Draymond Green along with their big trade deadline acquisition from last season Jimmy Butler. Instead of playing the nightcap of an Opening Night doubleheader(featuring the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder hosting their first ever championship banner in the first game of the season against the Houston Rockets) on TNT, the Lakers will play on a national TV network that hasn’t broadcast a game of theirs in more than twenty years. With the new media rights setup in the NBA for this season, Turner Sports did not have their contract renewed. Instead, the NBA TV broadcasting rights stayed with ESPN/ABC and shifted over to NBC/Universal, which used to broadcast NBA games at its broadcasting peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s. NBC used to show NBA playoff games along with broadcasting the NBA Finals. In the early 2000s, that meant showing a young Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal having their three-peat run shown on their network. So, the return of NBA games onto NBC’s airwaves will definitely bring back some nostalgia for Lakers fans old enough to remember those glorious championships at the beginning of this 21st century AD. In the new age of streaming, all NBC broadcasted games will be available to view on their streaming platform Peacock, which will also have a standalone broadcast window of its own.

After that Opening night game that will kick off the first full season of Luka Magic in Purple & Gold, the Lakers will host a Friday night game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who eliminated them in the first round of the playoffs last season. Instead of the game traditionally being broadcast on ESPN, it will instead be shown on another streaming platform that millions of people have flocked to in the age of cord-cutting and subscribing to platforms on smart TVs. It will be on Amazon Prime Video, which also has agreed to a broadcast deal with the NBA that will have it show some games on its platform exclusively. The Prime Video team will have Friday nights as one of their broadcasting windows and their first doubleheader shall feature the Lakers-Wolves rematch at Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles, Calif. The Lakers and Wolves will also play each other in another early season game(in Minneapolis) on Wed. Oct 29 on ESPN, which still has its Wednesday night window fully in its possession but lost the right to broadcast NBA games on Friday nights on its networks full-time. The Lakers will have nine additional games broadcast on Prime Video, with some of them being on Friday nights and others being on Thursday nights. Their first NBA Cup group play game will be on Halloween night on the road against the Memphis Grizzlies, who are in Group B for the Western Conference along with the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Clippers and New Orleans Pelicans. That game is streaming on Prime Video along with their group play finale against the Mavericks, who have rebuilt their roster around their number one draft pick in Cooper Flagg. The matchup will be occurring on Black Friday after Amazon shows its annual NFL game on the ultimate shopper’s holiday earlier in the day. This will be the first matchup between Luka Doncic and the young Flagg, who has risen up to be the successor to the empire that Luka established in the heart of Texas. The game will tip off at around 7 pm Pacific Time as it will be another home game for the Lakers, who will host the Clippers on a Tuesday night game on Nov. 25 for West Group B play in the NBA Cup. The game against their crosstown rivals(formerly cross-hallway rivals) will have an odd tip off time of 8 pm PT, a rather late tip-off time and thirty minutes later than the usual one of 7:30 pm. The Lakers’ other Group B game will be against the New Orleans Pelicans on the road on Fri, Nov. 14 at 5 pm PT/7 pm Central Time. If the Lakers win Group B in the West, they will advance to the quarterfinals/knockout stage of the NBA Cup and those games will be added onto the schedule as necessary. If they don’t advance, two additional games in the early part of December will be added onto the schedule for the Lakers and all other teams who do not make it out of the group stage of the NBA Cup. The Lakers won this unique in-season tournament in its first edition two years ago in the early part of the 2023-24 season.

Other significant early season games scheduled to happen for the Lakers will be a Sunday night game against the Miami Heat at Crypto.com Arena on Nov. 2, a couple of Wednesday night primetime games against the San Antonio Spurs and at the defending-champion OKC Thunder. A few big road games against strong Eastern Conference opponents shall also occur for the Lakers, who will face the Milwaukee Bucks on Sat. Nov 15 at the Fiserv Forum, the Boston Celtics on Fri. Dec, 5 at the TD Garden(a game streaming on Prime Video), and a Sunday night game against the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center on Dec. 7. The Lakers will have an 11-day scheduling gap that will be filled by NBA Cup games or games added onto the schedule for them due to a failure to qualify for the knockout stage of the tournament and then have three straight road games scheduled against the Utah Jazz, Clippers(not really an away game) and Phoenix Suns before their Christmas Day game against the Houston Rockets, who acquired Kevin Durant in a trade from the Suns in the offseason. Durant will be entering his 19th NBA season and is on a Rockets team that finished second in the Western Conference standings last season, but were knocked out in the first round of the playoffs just like the Lakers. This matchup will be the fourth game occurring on a Christmas Thursday for the NBA, who will have their traditional five games broadcasted on ESPN/ABC on the happiest holiday of them all. As long as both stars are healthy, LeBron James and Kevin Durant will be facing off against one another yet again. Facing off in the NBA Finals three times previously, LeBron and Durant are two of the greatest stars of their generation and as they continue to get older and their teammates continually younger than they are, the game will eventually pass them by. But for now, another matchup between them will occur at 5 pm PT in downtown L.A on Christmas evening. The final two games of the 2025 part of the schedule for the Lakers will be home games against the Sacramento Kings on Sun. Dec 28 and the Detroit Pistons on Tues. Dec 30, which will be LeBron’s 41st birthday. As he enters his 23rd season in the NBA, King James will look to continue defying Father Time and put up big numbers with his intense style of play that features transition dunks(and blocks) and good assist moves to his teammates. This game against a playoff-contending Pistons team will definitely be a good one for LeBron to celebrate his special day with(who knows, it could be the final time LeBron plays a game on his actual birthday in his career).

Ringing in the new year of 2026, the Lakers will have a set of games hosting the Grizzlies at home before playing a couple of games in the Central Time Zone against New Orleans and San Antonio, the latter of which will be a primetime game. The other odd scheduling wrinkle that the Purple & Gold will be involved in partially is the showing of NBA games exclusively streaming on Peacock, the NBC streaming platform. There will be a Monday night window for Peacock to show games on and the Lakers will have four appearances on Peacock’s exclusive Monday Night Basketball lineup. Competing with ESPN in the early part of the season on Monday nights(due to Monday Night Football broadcasts), the NBA is giving Peacock users NBA games on Monday nights. The Lakers’ first Peacock Monday night game will occur on Dec. 1 in a home game avainst the Suns. Their other Peacock exclusive games will be on Jan. 12, 2026 at Sacramento, Feb 9, 2026 against the Thunder and Mar. 16, 2026 at Houston. So, it will be a fair split of two home games and two road games for the Lakers on Peacock, which will also stream all of the NBC-broadcasted games that the Lakers are scheduled to appear in for the 2025-26 regular season.

At the end of January and beginning of February, the Lakers will go on their annual Emmys trip as Crypto.com Arena hosts the awards show on the last Sunday of January. On that road trip, they will have some tough opponents to face including the Denver Nuggets, Dallas Mavericks, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks. The latter of those games will be shown on NBC at 4 pm PT/7 pm Eastern Time on Sun. Feb 1, 2026, the one-year anniversary of the Lakers and Knicks playing each other at Madison Square Garden on the same night when the Lakers acquired Luka Doncic(from) and traded away Anthony Davis to Dallas. On that date, it will be a full circle moment as Luka “celebrates” his one-year anniversary of being traded away from the team that he starred on for several years in style by trying to add his name to the list of legendary performances by visiting players at MSG. The Lakers will finally return from their Emmys trip with a home game on my birthday, February 5, when they host the Sixers at Crypto.com Arena in an Amazon Prime Video broadcast at 7 pm PT, around four hours after I officially turn 26 years old. So, that will be exciting to watch the Lakers play on my birthday once again. The Lakers will have a five-game homestand before the All-Star break as they will host the Warriors on a Saturday primetime game on ABC, the Thunder on a Monday Peacock game, the Spurs and then the Mavericks on the Thursday night before the All-Star weekend festivities kick off at the brand new arena in Inglewood hosting home games for the Clippers in the Intuit Dome. The All-Star Game will occur at the newest arena in the NBA on Sun. Feb 15, 2026 and whatever the format for the game broadcast on NBC is, we currently don’t know. TNT did a good job with its swan song broadcast of the All-Star Game at Chase Center in San Francisco last season with its main analysts being the team captains instead of having the All-Star top vote-receivers in each conference have their own team. So, we shall see what it looks like at Intuit Dome in six months time.

The Lakers return from the All-Star break on Fri, Feb 20, 2026 when they host the Clippers at the arena both of them used to call home(now it’s the Purple & Gold’s exclusively, along with the Los Angeles Kings and the Sparks women’s basketball team) on ESPN, which will have a few Friday night broadcasts back under its windows when Amazon Prime Video reverts to Thursday night coverage(following the conclusion of the NFL regular season I assume). Then, on Sun. Feb 22, 2026, the Lakers will have a special afternoon start time of 3:30 pm PT in a rivalry game against the Boston Celtics on a day when a legendary head coach shall receive his statue on Star Plaza outside the arena. The head coach for the majority of the Showtime Era for the Lakers Pat Riley will have a statue unveiling ceremony on that date of 2/22/26. How fitting that the opponent on that day will be the Celtics, who Riley finally helped the Purple & Gold defeat in 1985 after losing against them in 1984 and a lot of other NBA Finals played in the 1960s. Winning two out of his four titles as Lakers head coach over Boston(1987 as well), Riley will finally be endowed with the ultimate honor for his crowning accomplishment of leading the Lakers to becoming the glorious franchise that has fans always demanding more championship glory. Coaching legendary players such as Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Jamal Wilkes and Byron Scott, Riley instilled a culture of winning that permeated in the glory days of Dr. Jerry Buss’ ownership of the team when they played at the Fabulous Great Western Forum in Inglewood. Now, he will finally have a statue along with his players with statues on Star Plaza and the other legendary greats who have cemented their legacies with the Los Angeles Lakers. It will definitely be a good ceremony and an epic game against a Boston team that has made some questionable moves in the offseason after losing their star player in Jayson Tatum to a devastating Achilles injury in their second round playoff series loss to the New York Knicks in May of this year.

The month of February will conclude for the Lakers in another Saturday Night Primetime game against the Warriors, but this time in San Francisco. There will be one more game at Chase Center between the two best teams on the West Coast in April, when playoff positioning and berths will be decided. Moving onto March, big games on the schedule feature the Denver Nuggets(twice, on Thur, Mar 5 and Sat, Mar 14), Indiana Pacers(twice, on Fri, Mar 6 and Wed Mar 25), Knicks(another Sunday afternoon game), Timberwolves(another odd 8 pm PT start on Tues, Mar 10, that’s a 10 pm CT start for those watching from Minnesota), Rockets(twice in a row at Toyota Center in Houston, including the Monday Peacock game), and the Miami Heat on Thurs, Mar 19, 2026 at the Kaseya Center, a building where LeBron James played for four years and clinched two NBA championships in. That game in Miami could be the final one for LeBron, who could also be playing for the final time in Cleveland against the Cavaliers on Wed. Jan 28, 2026(a game that will be broadcast on ESPN). The Lakers will also host the Cavs on Tues, Mar 31, 2026, so there will be one more potential matchup for the King against his hometown team.

There will be six crucial games in April that could determine playoff positioning for the Lakers and the majority of opponents that they shall face. On Thur, April 2, 2026, they will travel to Oklahoma City to play the Thunder in a game streaming on Prime Video that could determine the top seeds in the Western Conference. Another critical road game will occur on April 5, 2026 against the Mavericks at American Airlines Center. Being a national TV game on NBC(swapping Sunday Night Football for Sunday Night Basketball at the halfway point of the season), this will be an intense matchup that could serve as a potential playoff preview. Another game against the Thunder at home will occur on Tues, April 7, then the potential final regular season matchup between LeBron James and Steph Curry will occur on Thur, April 9 at Chase Center in San Francisco. The game will have a 7 pm PT tip-off and will be streaming on Prime Video, which will also exclusively broadcast the NBA Play-In Tournament games the next week. The final two regular season games for the Lakers will occur at Crypto.com Arena against the Suns and Utah Jazz respectively.

So, the significant games for the Lakers in 2025-26 have been unveiled. With old faces coming back and new additions such as Marcus Smart, DeAndre Ayton and Jake LaRavia joining the team, the Purple & Gold hope to get to new heights in what could be a passing-the-torch season. As the LeBron era is dimming, the Luka Magic era is rising. This could be the last chance for this duo to compete with one another, but who knows what surprises await around the corner in the 79th NBA season ever. There is only a few weeks left before training camp begins and the preseason schedule will reveal itself in due time. For the Lakers, they will need to be at a higher level of competition under J.J Redick’s leadership for a second year and they can rise to the top of the West yet again while having to deal with some of the game’s brightest young stars such as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, Ja Morant, Victor Wembanyama, Cooper Flagg and others. Also some weird veteran returns to the places that they made their fame in Chris Paul(back on the Clippers after spending years on other teams’ roster, has been a Western Conference statesman his whole career) and Damian Lillard(who returns to Portland after having a rough couple of seasons with the Bucks). So, this will be by no means easy, but that will make this trek all the more worth it. May the Lakers have a glorious run in 2025-26 and it shall hopefully yield their 18th championship in franchise history. The road to greatness is always long and steady, but the grind is worth it if you win it all in the end.