From Abu Dhabi to Brooklyn: NBA Preseason Games Begin Oct. 2 as Regular Season Opens Oct. 21

By Nick Ravenshade
NENC Media Group — October 1, 2025

The short answer to the question many fans are asking on the eve of October: yes, there are NBA games tomorrow — but no, the regular season does not begin until later in the month. Thursday, Oct. 2, will see the first of a host of preseason and international exhibition games that the league stages as part of its global calendar, while the 2025-26 regular season is scheduled to open on Tuesday, Oct. 21, with the full 82-game slate running through next spring.

The marquee matchup for American viewers and international fans alike is the NBA Abu Dhabi Game on Oct. 2, when the Philadelphia 76ers face the New York Knicks at Etihad Arena. The league has increasingly used overseas exhibition fixtures to showcase marquee teams and players — part entertainment, part marketing push — and this early-October window is the opening act for 16 days of preseason action that will include stops in Australia, Canada, China and Puerto Rico. Those games serve multiple purposes: they are practice under pressure, a soft launch for international broadcasting partners and a revenue stream that helps the league’s growing global footprint.

For coaches and front offices, the preseason is not so much about wins and losses as it is about finalizing rotations, assessing injured players and giving rookie additions and fringe roster candidates a chance to stake a claim. With the regular season still three weeks away, teams will use the Oct. 2–17 exhibition window to calibrate minutes, test defensive schemes and manage star workloads — especially after a summer of heavy international travel, exhibition tours and extended training camps. That balancing act is particularly delicate this year: several high-profile veterans are returning from late-summer surgeries and many teams are navigating rookie integration amid a compressed schedule of global events.

The timing of the regular season — Oct. 21 for the league-wide tipoff — reflects a calendar the NBA has carefully stitched to accommodate both a revived in-season tournament (the NBA Cup, scheduled this year to run Oct. 31–Dec. 16) and an expanded broadcast framework that leans heavily on streaming partners. The league released its official schedule in August, and the Oct. 21 opening date had been flagged in its key-dates notice. The in-season Cup and the broader slate are part of a strategic shift to create additional competitive stakes early in the campaign while meeting growing global content demand.

Broadcasting is a conspicuous part of the change. This season brings a newly reconfigured media landscape in which Amazon Prime Video, NBC/Peacock, ESPN/ABC and league tools such as NBA League Pass share different windows and packages. Prime Video, for example, is planning an elevated presentation with interactive features and will air its first doubleheader of regular-season games beginning Oct. 24 — a week after the season opener — under a multiyear rights arrangement that reshapes how fans watch and engage with games. For fans, that means checking local listings and new streaming windows carefully: some games that would once have been straightforward cable telecasts will now live on platform-specific schedules.

What to expect on Oct. 2, beyond the headlining Abu Dhabi matchup, is the familiar mix of exhibition quirks: shortened rotations, experimental lineups and an emphasis on player health. Ticketing tends to be lighter and more affordable than regular-season pricing, and broadcasters treat these matchups as softer productions — less polish, more experimentation — even as they help teams and the league test new technologies and regional broadcast pipelines. For die-hard fans, preseason games are the first chance to see new draft picks and summer-league standouts in a live environment; for casual followers, they offer the first televised glimpses of how rosters might look when the regular season begins in earnest.

The lead-up to Oct. 21 is consequential for several teams. Franchises with championship aspirations will be hyper-focused on managing minute loads for their superstars — a misstep in October can have repercussions months later — while rebuilding clubs will use the exhibition slate to evaluate role players who could provide immediate depth or, conversely, to showcase talent for potential trade interest. Roster moves are still possible in this window; teams may waive, trade or sign players as they finalize 15-man rosters and two-way assignments before opening night. Contract cutoffs, injury designations and late transactions can alter expectations up to the day the regular season begins.

Fans heading to Etihad Arena or tuning in at home should also be mindful of officiating and statistical anomalies in preseason: referees call the game more tightly on some calls, while others are let go to give coaches and players the chance to find rhythm without the consequence of a standings loss. Betting markets generally price preseason contests as exhibitions; lines and totals are often misleading because they do not capture the strategic rest and roster experiments coaches deploy. If you’re watching to scout, focus on rotation patterns, how coaches deploy two-way players and how teams close quarters on defense — those signal more about October-to-April success than any single preseason box score.

Operationally, the NBA’s global preseason program also tests logistics that matter in a post-pandemic, streaming-first era: time zones and broadcast windows, player travel protocols, venue readiness and the commercial machinery that monetizes sponsorships and local partnerships. For the league, successful international exhibitions strengthen local partnerships and build data and viewer habits that underpin future rights negotiations. For cities and venues hosting games, the events provide short-term tourism boost and help cultivate basketball ecospheres that can feed grassroots growth and future talent pipelines.

In sum, Thursday’s Oct. 2 slate is a starter course — a chance to whet appetites, test lineups and do the necessary housekeeping before the real competition begins on Oct. 21. Fans who hoped the regular season would already be underway tomorrow should temper expectations: the calendar is deliberately staggered to accommodate global expansion, in-season competition and new broadcast mechanics. But for viewers who follow closely, the next three weeks will be rich with clues about how teams intend to approach a season that promises both traditional rivalries and a new set of competitive and commercial stakes.

— Reporting by Nick Ravenshade, NENC Media Group. Sources: NBA key dates and schedule; NBA game listings for Oct. 2; ESPN preseason coverage; AS.com preseason schedule; Associated Press reporting on Prime Video’s NBA coverage.

Photo: Günter Hentschel, CC BY-ND 2.0, via Flickr