Леброн Жэймс Филадельфи 76ерс багт нэгдэх шийдвэр гаргаснаар NBA-ийн 2026-27 оны улирлын тоглолтын хуваарийг эцэслэн батлах боломжтой боллоо.
NBA-ийн комиссар Адам Силвер өнгөрсөн долдугаар сарын 16-нд Жэймсийн шийдвэр тоглолтын хуваарь, ялангуяа нээлтийн долоо хоног болон Зул сарын баярын тоглолтуудад шууд нөлөөлдөг гэдгийг онцолж байв. Одоогоор 41 настай хэдий ч лигийн хамгийн нөлөө бүхий тоглогч хэвээр байгаа түүнийг шийдвэрээ гаргахыг лигийн удирдлага болон өргөн нэвтрүүлгийн түншүүд хүлээж байсан юм.
Өнгөрсөн улиралд Лос Анжелес Лэйкерс баг үндэсний телевизээр хамгийн олон удаа гарсан багуудын нэг байсан тул Жэймсийг элсүүлсэн Филадельфи 76ерс багийн тоглолтын хуваарийг лигийн зүгээс илүүтэй анхаарч байна. Хэдийгээр Жэймсийн шийдвэр удааширсан нь хуваарь гаргах үйл явцад тодорхой хэмжээний саатал учруулсан ч лигийн зүгээс хуваарийг наймдугаар сарын дундуур танилцуулахаар төлөвлөж байна.
NBA-ийн хуваарь гаргах үйл явц нь маш нарийн төвөгтэй бөгөөд Зул сарын баярын тоглолтуудыг хамгийн түрүүнд төлөвлөдөг уламжлалтай. Жэймс 2007 оноос хойш жил бүр Зул сарын баярын тоглолтод оролцсон тул түүнийг сонгосон баг энэ өдрийн хуваарьт багтах нь тодорхой болжээ. Лигийн мэргэжилтнүүд тоглолтын хуваарийг батлахдаа хэдэн тэрбум боломжит хувилбарыг судалдаг бөгөөд оны сүүлээр ийнхүү од тоглогчдын шийдвэр гарах нь хуваарь гаргах багийн хувьд хүндрэлтэй сорилт болдог байна.
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When LeBron James finally chose the Philadelphia 76ers last week, perhaps no one outside of Philadelphia was happier than the NBA’s scheduling team. Just as the teams waited on the NBA legend to make his last decision, so did the league office.
As NBA commissioner Adam Silver pointed out earlier this month, on Day 16 of James’ indecision, the NBA was waiting on its star to pick a destination.
“Where LeBron plays affects the schedule,” Silver said July 16 while speaking on panel at the CNBC/Boardroom Game Plan event. “I would like him to make his announcement already so we can finish the schedule, because, as you might imagine, the teams are calling us, the networks are calling us, and everybody wants to lock in the schedule. But it will influence how we set the schedule, how we set opening week, Christmas Day, etc.”
With James choosing Philadelphia on Friday, the NBA can get to work in finalizing its 2026-27 schedule. Even at 41 years old, he remains a key component of the NBA’s broadcast plans. While James’ delayed decision slowed down NBA business, the league still expects to announce its schedule in mid-August as it historically has, according to a league spokesperson. But it seems that it has at least impacted the process.
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Last season, James and the Los Angeles Lakers tied for the most national TV appearances of any team. James remains the league’s most bankable star. He will turn the 76ers into TV stars, too. The 76ers were scheduled for just 14 national broadcast appearances last summer when the NBA dropped its schedule; expect the NBA and its media partners — NBC, ESPN and Amazon — to max out their games this upcoming season.
So why does the NBA care where James plays next season? All 30 teams play 82 games, after all.
The NBA goes to great lengths to construct its schedule, and the process begins with its marquee days and nights. Those are the first set of games the league figures out.
“We’ll generate, again, hundreds of potential Christmas Day drafts,” Evan Wasch, the NBA’s executive vice president for basketball strategy and growth, told The Athletic in 2022. “The different teams you could feature, the different matchups, the different time slots, and then we’ll just start conversations with ESPN. See what they have in mind. Try to find middle ground and usually we’re pretty aligned with sort of the general structure and we might have some sort of disagreement on small pieces of the schedule, but we navigate those fairly easily.”
It’s obvious that the NBA would want James on those big stages. They tend to not only be some of the highest-rated games of the season for the league but also when it puts its best foot forward.
Like Santa, James has become a Christmas Day tradition. He made his debut as an 18-year-old rookie for the Cleveland Cavaliers and has played on Christmas Day every year since 2007. Whichever team he chose likely needed to be slotted in for the schedule that day.
But the league also figures out Christmas in conjunction with opening week. NBC hosted its opening night last season with two games on a Tuesday, ESPN took the next two nights with four games total, and Amazon closed off the week with two Friday-night matchups. Last season, the 76ers didn’t play a nationally broadcast game until Halloween but will likely not have to wait that long this upcoming season. James and the Lakers played once on NBC and once on Amazon during opening week.
The impact on any team he chose would have been immense. The Miami Heat were scheduled for just five national TV games last season, while Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks had 18 scheduled. The Cavaliers were scheduled for 24 last season. Either of those two franchises would have had a much bigger spotlight with James on their roster.
In the past, the NBA has usually waited to sit down with executives from its media partners until the first half of July, then build out the rest of the schedule, Wasch told The Athletic years ago. It then relied on schedule-optimizing software to make schedules that could fit the parameters it needed. The number of options could initially stretch into the billions as the league winnowed down the choices.
But the later a star player, let alone James, makes his decision on a team, the harder it gets for the league to finish the schedule.
“It’s the scheduling team’s nightmare when that stuff happens late in our process,” Wasch told the Houston Chronicle in 2023. “The worst outcome is big superstar movement in late July. That will really push the process back.”
