Monday night represented an interesting scheduling quirk as the second round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs got underway, and it was a night that both NBC and the NBA will probably regret.
As the conference semifinals get underway, NBC has Game 1 in all four series. However, instead of airing doubleheaders, the games are staggered with one starting at 7 p.m. ET and the other at 8:30 p.m. ET. One will air on NBC while the other will air on Peacock (and for those with access to the newly relaunched NBCSN).
On Monday night, that meant Knicks-Sixers Game 1 was on NBC while Spurs-Wolves aired on Peacock.
Unfortunately for both the league and its network partner, the games could not have been more of a polar opposite from an entertainment and drama perspective.
New York blew out Philadelphia in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series by a final score of 137-98. The Knicks led by 8 after the first quarter, 23 at halftime, and 31 by the end of the third. It was one of the most uncompetitive games of the playoffs so far.
On the flip side, the Spurs and Wolves played maybe the best game of the entire postseason thus far. Anthony Edwards made a surprising return from injury for Minnesota as the Wolves overcame an incredible triple-double from Victor Wembanyama (11 points, 15 rebounds, 12 blocks) to win 104-102 when Julian Champagnie missed what would have been a winning three at the buzzer.
So why is NBC going with the overlapping starts for the playoffs when ESPN and Amazon will air doubleheaders at 7 p.m. ET and 9:30 p.m. ET for the rest of the week?
Unfortunately, this is where the NBA’s greatly increased broadcast exposure on NBC (and increased viewership numbers) runs into a bit of a roadblock.
During the regular season, NBC’s Coast 2 Coast Tuesday doubleheader aired games regionally in most weeks with start times at 8:30 p.m. ET and 11 p.m. ET. One game would be seen on over-the-air NBC while the other was streaming on Peacock. Much of the country saw the early game on network airwaves and the late game on streaming. Meanwhile, the west coast got the late game on NBC during primetime. That wasn’t necessarily universal, though, as NBC did air the occasional network doubleheader.
With a theoretical doubleheader on Monday, it would have meant cutting into local network affiliate programming, local news, and in the later hours, the Tonight Show.
The end result was most of the country seeing a blowout and likely tuning out after the first half while you had to flock to Peacock to watch the best of what the league has to offer. It’s not something the NBA or NBC could have predicted. It’s bad luck more than anything given the Knicks-Sixers series was projected to be closer than Wolves-Spurs, but it left fans in a suboptimal position.
Could NBC have aired a playoff doubleheader so the country could see both Knicks-Sixers and Wolves-Spurs on national television? One would hope it would not be insurmountable as part of the new television contracts, even if it upsets the apple cart with local affiliate schedules or has to move some start times around.
But it’s also possible that NBC wants full playoff games on Peacock to continue to push the importance of the streamer given the importance of live sports to their business model. After all, NBC has put even NFL playoff games on Peacock, so it’s not like the network will lose sleep over this setup. And for engaged fans with access to both, it was convenient to be able to turn off Knicks-Sixers and turn on a competitive Western Conference game that ended before 2 a.m. ET for once.
Given the choice, it’s no surprise that NBC is leaning into big markets and brands with their scheduling choices in putting the Knicks-Sixers and Lakers-Thunder games on the big network. Hopefully for the sake of fans, we’ll see two competitive games on Tuesday night and the network’s scheduling choices won’t be this much of an issue.
About Matt Yoder