The NBA unveiled the 2015-16 schedule on Wednesday featuring a Christmas Day rematch of last season’s championship series between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Cavaliers and LeBron James visit the defending champion Warriors and Stephen Curry for a 5 p.m. ET start in the middle of the holiday lineup that starts with the New Orleans Pelicans visiting the Miami Heat at noon ET and followed by the Chicago Bulls at the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The final two games on the Christmas menu are the San Antonio Spurs at the Houston Rockets in a Texas tussle and the Los Angeles Clippers meeting the Los Angeles Lakers.
The season opens Oct. 27 on TNT with the Cavs visiting the Bulls, guided by Fred Hoiberg in his NBA coaching debut, and the Warriors facing the Pelicans in playoff rematches from last season. Golden State will receive their championship rings before that game.
Also on opening weekend will be Kevin Durant, who missed most of last season with injuries, and the Thunder playing host to the Spurs, Kobe Bryant returning to the Lakers for a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves and No. 1 overall draft pick Karl-Anthony Towns, and DeAndre Jordan and the Clippers entertaining the Dallas Mavericks.
Other noteworthy matchups include the Clippers and Jordan traveling to Dallas on Nov. 11 to face the Mavericks, the team to which the center committed during the offseason as a free agent and then backed out to remain in LA, and forward LaMarcus Aldridge returning to Portland with the Spurs to face the Trail Blazers, his former team, on the same night.
The growing star power of forward Anthony Davis will land the Pelicans on national television 13 times in 2015-16. The Cavs and Warriors will play the maximum 25 times on national TV (ESPN, ABC, TNT) compared with just seven for the New York Knicks and eight for the Atlanta Hawks. The Philadelphia 76ers, Detroit Pistons and Denver Nuggets will not make a national TV appearance.
Saturday night games on ABC make their debut on Jan. 23 with a Bulls-Cavs matchup and continue through the end of the regular season with other marquee matchups.
One of the league’s scheduling objectives this season was to cut down on four-games-in-five-nights and back-to-back games scenarios to give the players more rest — and it did so with a 60 percent reduction in four games in five nights and back-to-backs being trimmed from a per-team average of 19.3 to 17.8 during the regular season.