October brings with it many things: Pumpkins, scary movie marathons, scarves, and for sports fans, the return of the NBA. The world’s greatest basketball league is back for the 2018-19 season, and the landscape has changed a lot over the summer. Lebron James is now a Laker, Jimmy Butler is apparently trying to get out of the Timberwolves organization or burn it down, and the Western Conference is about to be bloodier than the climax of a Dario Argento film.
If you’re a cord cutter, you won’t struggle to keep up with the basketball action, as the NBA is one of the most tech-forward sports leagues in the world. The league partners with a variety of broadcasters that offer streaming services, and even offers its own streaming experience.
Streaming options
NBA League Pass
The NBA has its own official streaming service, NBA League Pass, which offers a lot of games, albeit with a few strings attached. Users can purchase a few different tiers of subscriptions: The standard League Pass ($200 a year), which gives access to all games for all teams, along with replays of newer and classic games; League Pass Premium ($250 a year), which adds in in-arena streams during breaks; or a One Team pass ($120 a year), which gives viewers access to all the games, replays, and audio broadcasts for a single team. Users can also purchase individual games for $7. Note that League Pass users don’t get live access to games that are “blacked out,” meaning they are running on your local sports station or are nationally televised.
If you own a virtual reality headset, League Pass also offers a VR experience for some games.
WatchESPN
ESPN’s companion
Watch TNT
Similar to WatchESPN
B/R Live
Bleacher Report’s live video service offers users access to a variety of sports, but B/R’s crown jewel might be the NBA. Since Bleacher Report is owned by Turner Broadcasting Systems, the service provides access to games available via NBA League Pass, and users who are strapped for time have the option to purchase portions of games, in a move NBA Commissioner Adam Silver likens to video game “microtransactions.” Users can watch a particular quarter, so if you won’t be getting off work until the fourth quarter, you won’t need to pay for the whole game to watch the finale. You can even purchase, according to Silver, 15 minutes of a game, if you only have a little time in your schedule.
Sling TV
The new
Available via:
PlayStation Vue
Like Dish Network
Other resources
NBA subreddit
While Reddit is a fantastic resource for getting your NBA fill, it’s entirely too easy to waste entire weekends poking around the rest of the site. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
ESPN’s Gamecast
Though not a video option,
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