The Los Angeles Lakers remain the premier franchise in the NBA. With a massive international following and being led by two of the biggest superstars in basketball in Luka Doncic and LeBron James, the Lakers are regularly featured on national telecasts every season.
The 2025-26 season comes with a brand new media rights deal for the NBA, which has roped in NBC as well as Amazon. As such, national TV games will now be featured on NBC, Peacock and Amazon Prime, as well as both ESPN and ABC. And once again, the Lakers are at the top of the list in terms of number of nationally televised games.
According to Colin Salao of Front Office Sports, the Lakers, along with the Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors, are tied for the most national TV games in the 2025-26 season with 34:
The Knicks, Lakers, Thunder, and Warriors lead the NBA with 34 national TV or streamed games for the 2025–26 season.
Including games aired on ABC, ESPN, NBC, or streamed on Peacock and Prime Video. pic.twitter.com/RJCUFZC6kU
— Colin Salao (@colincsalao) August 14, 2025
There is a pretty large gap between these four teams and the rest of the league as the Minnesota Timberwolves and Houston Rockets are next in line at just 28 national games. But the Lakers, Thunder, Warriors and Knicks all make a ton of sense to be featured the most.
The Lakers need no explanation and the Thunder are the defending NBA Champions with the reigning MVP in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Warriors, of course, are also extremely popular and feature superstar Stephen Curry, while the Knicks are one of the biggest brands in American Sports and are expected to be one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
For the Lakers, their games are spread out pretty well amongst the five platforms with 10 games on Amazon Prime, seven on ESPN and NBC, six on ABC and four on Peacock. Additionally, with this new media rights deal, there will be national games on at least one of those platforms every single night.
Lakers kick off 2025-26 regular season on national TV
The Lakers will be starting off this season with a pair of national TV games. First on Opening Night as Luka Doncic and LeBron JAmes will be taking on Stephen Curry when the Lakers host the Warriors on NBC. Three days later, the Lakers will be taking part in the first ever NBA broadcast on Amazon Prime as they take on the Timberwolves in a playoff rematch.
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