The NBA’s $77B Future Starts Tonight 

The 2025–26 NBA season is here. 

While the league’s core has stayed intact, the season brings in new changes stemming from a new media deal, major ownership changes, and a looming salary-cap circumvention scandal.

Front Office Sports looks at the biggest storylines ahead of the 2025–26 NBA season. 

Broadcast Fragmentation

The most notable change will be the NBA’s new, 11-year, $77 billion media deal. The NBA brought back ESPN as a partner, while replacing Warner Bros. Discovery with NBC and Amazon. 

The additional partners turned into an increase in national games—75 more than last year—as the league welcomed streaming on NBC’s Peacock and Amazon’s Prime Video. However, this could also be a more expensive and confusing season for the avid NBA fan, given the rotating broadcasters.

The NBA seems aware of the issue, as the NBA Communications X account constantly pushes its daily watch guide. The league also launched a “Tap to Watch” initiative that directs fans to the broadcasters of each game, whether on national or local platforms. The initiative can be found on the NBA app, team websites, and on NBA social media.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed the issue at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit last month, acknowledging that he thinks there will be “disruption” for NBA fans.

“I recognize that I’m going to be sitting on some stage a few months from now, and people are going to be complaining that you have three partners now and it’s hard to find the games. So the NBA app is going to be a front door to all those services. … And over time, technology will make this easier,” Silver said.

New Owners, Increased Valuations

This season will be the first year that two of the league’s historic franchises will be under new majority ownership.

The Celtics were sold for $6.1 billion to an ownership group led by Bill Chisolm, a transaction finalized in August. The sale pinned Boston as the most valuable NBA franchise, only to be leapfrogged by the Lakers, its longtime rival, when minority owner Mark Walter purchased a majority stake at a $10 billion valuation.

The sale was a record high for all professional sports franchises.

Amid the finalization of the sale, the Celtics were one of the most active franchises in the offseason, shedding more than $250 million in projected salary and tax payments by trading away several key players like Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday.

The Lakers were one of the quieter teams in the offseason, but it remains to be seen how the leadership of Walter, who owns MLB’s Dodgers, the league’s highest spender, will impact how they spend throughout the season.

Clippers Fiasco Fallout

The most prominent story of the NBA offseason still does not have a resolution, hours away from tip-off.

On Sept. 3, sports journalist Pablo Torre reported that Clippers star Kawhi Leonard received $28 million for a “no-show” job from Aspiration, a now-bankrupt financial services company. The contract was allegedly meant to help Los Angeles circumvent the NBA’s salary cap.

There have been several more reports since the initial allegation, including the Boston Sports Journal reporting an additional $20 million deal between Leonard and Aspiration.

The NBA announced shortly after Torre’s report that they had launched an investigation. Silver said at the Tuned In summit that the league “will get to the bottom of this,” but the league has said little over the last month.

Leonard will start the season as a member of the Clippers, and Steve Ballmer has free rein to watch his beloved team at the Intuit Dome. However, all eyes will be on the Clippers, and whatever punishment, if any, will be handed to them as they host the 2026 All-Star Game in February.

A New All-Star Game Format … Again

The NBA will also welcome a new format at the All-Star Game for the third year in a row as it struggles to bring attention to its exhibition event.

The All-Star Game is expected to be a three-team tournament that will feature two teams with U.S. players and one with international players. The NBA is following the NHL’s lead by adding a global component after the 4 Nations Face-Off, which was a massive viewership success last year. It helped that the players valued representing their country and played hard despite the exhibition format.

The NBA All-Star Game’s viewership has dropped in the past decade, but the past three years have been particularly dreary as the only years not to breach 5.5 million viewers. 

Injured Stars, New Faces

Looming over the start of the NBA season is the number of injured stars. Seven 2025 NBA All-Stars will not be available to start the season, and that doesn’t even count Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton, who led Indiana to Game 7 of the NBA Finals last year:

• Darius Garland, Cavaliers
• Tyler Herro, Heat
• Kyrie Irving, Mavericks
• LeBron James, Lakers
• Damian Lillard, Blazers
• Jayson Tatum, Celtics
• Jalen Williams, Thunder

James, still the NBA’s biggest star based on TV viewership and social media following, will be out until around mid-November—the first time the season will start without the four-time MVP in his 23-year career.

However, this also opens the door for the league’s new faces. The league has been reliant on its aging stars—James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant—to bring its viewership, but all three are on the tail end of their careers.

The league already has some new stars like Nikola Jokić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, but it’s clear they have yet to secure the same level of fandom as their predecessors. There’s room for them to take the mantle, alongside other stars like Anthony Edwards and Luka Dončić.

It’s also the third year of French center Victor Wembanyama, and a run to the playoffs for the Spurs could cement him as one of the league’s faces. The third year of James’s career was when he carried the Cavaliers to the playoffs for the first time.