It’s finally here folks, the marathon slog that is the NBA season. Time to hibernate for the autumn & winter months and gorge on the relentless buffet of games. If you catch just one game a week or like us fall asleep at your work desk because you were up watching Denver play Utah until 4am on a Thursday morning, we’ve got you covered. Readers of a certain vintage will remember the days when if you were lucky you could hope to catch Micheal Jordan once a month on Screen Sport during the late 80’s, or one live game a week on Channel 4 in the mid 90’s. The likes of Mike Carlson and Scoop Jackson may be gone, but if you are a UK based hoops fan and are prepared to spend a few quid, you can literally spend every waking moment getting your hoops fix.
If your not already an NBA league pass subscriber, sell one of your kids or those shitty old 2pac and 50 cent CD’s that are cluttering up the spare room and go get it now. The price has jumped up a little this year, but the ability to watch games whenever you wish or in condensed form make it great value. It’s right up there with electricity and the internal combustion engine on the inventions scale. If you don’t fancy ponying up for that, then BT Sport is a great option. They are showing more games than ever this year, nine in the first week alone. These usually mirror the primetime US games that go out on EPSN & TNT, but there is a healthy dose of NBA TV and local games thrown in too, so there is a very good chance of seeing your favourite team, even if it’s Atlanta or Phoenix.
Each week we’ll try to give you a steer on which games are worth watching, where you can catch them and the UK start times. With the -8 hour time difference between the UK and US Pacific time things can get a little confusing if maths is not your strong point, so schedule wise we will always list games on the day’s they are played in the US with UK time and day shown in brackets. The numbers shown after each game are our predicted point spreads, IE: (CLE -7) , means we think Cleveland are 7 point favourites in the game, these are not actual betting spreads but a guide, please check with your chosen bookmaker for the point spreads on the eve of the game and follow our twitter feed for up to date point spreads, odds and information each day. There are some tasty match ups in the first week, with a number of high profile players returning to face former teams and conference rivals squaring off for the first time this season.
On opening night, flat earther Kyrie Irving returns to Cleveland with the new look Boston Celtics, giving us an early peek at how the two favourites to win the Eastern Conference match up. Before you’ve had time to digest that it’s straight into Houston at Golden State as Chris Paul reacquaints himself with the his old rivals from the bay. Carmelo Anthony welcomes his former team the Knicks to OKC on Thursday night before we get our first look at Lonzo Ball when the Lakers & Clippers square off. It’s time to stop watching football, sleeping and spending quality time with the family and get to know who Milos Teodosic is. Enjoy!