The NBA announced its full 2025–26 season schedule Thursday. Aside from the entry of the league’s new broadcast partners, the schedule also showed an incremental—and perhaps negligible—change as the league tries to combat load management.
For the upcoming season, NBA teams will average 14.4 back-to-back sets, which are when teams play games on two consecutive days. The number is down slightly from 14.9 last season. No team will play more than 16 back-to-backs, while a handful of teams will play just 13.
The NBA has cut down significantly on back-to-backs over the past decade as it’s become a target in the schedule for teams to rest players. In the 2014–15 season, teams averaged nearly 20 back-to-back sets.
However, this year’s 14.4 number isn’t the lowest average for a season. In the 2022–23 season, the average per team was 13.3, while it was 14.0 in the 2023–24 season. No team had more than 15 back-to-backs in the 2022–23 season.
The marginal uptick, though, is likely due to the NBA’s strategy with timing. In an effort to ensure the availability of stars for national games, the NBA’s schedule ensures there will be no back-to-backs for teams participating in these games:
- Opening week national TV games
- NBA Cup
- Christmas
- MLK Day four-game national lineup
- ABC Saturday (10 games)
- ABC Sunday (8 games)
- NBC Sunday (11 games)
The NBA made similar schedule restrictions last year, though this year’s list is more comprehensive and considers the arrival of NBC—which will start Sunday Night Basketball on Feb. 1 and a quadruple header on MLK Day—and Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of the NBA Cup.
It’s worth noting that the back-to-back restrictions don’t include Peacock NBA Monday and NBA on Amazon Prime Video every Thursday.
Combating Injuries
The NBA has faced criticism for its schedule, not only because of load management but also due to the injuries facing some of its top stars. This was put in the spotlight during the 2025 NBA playoffs when three All-Stars sustained Achilles tears, including Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton during Game 7 of the NBA Finals.
Haliburton has said publicly he doesn’t believe the workload is the reason for the injury that will cause him to miss the entire 2025–26 season.
“I think that there’s like a notion when guys get injured or when this has happened so many times that everybody thinks that they have the answer as to why this is happening. Everybody thinks we play too many games; we play too many minutes. All those things could be true, but I don’t think that is what’s causing these injuries,” Haliburton said on The Pat McAfee Show in July.
