Imagine settling in from a Wednesday at work, turning on the TV at 7 p.m. for the Warriors’ big Game 5 and finding out you missed the whole thing.
That might happen to some Bay Area fans, but it won’t happen to you.
The Warriors’ potential series-clinching game against the Rockets in Houston tips off at 4:30 p.m., which is the earliest weekday playoff tipoff for Golden State in at least 30 years, according to Basketball-Reference. Golden State is on the brink of clinching after winning Game 4 109-106 at home on Monday night.
The game, which will air on TNT, will be followed by the Lakers hosting the Timberwolves in Game 5 of that series. If Minnesota and Golden State win, they’ll play each other in the second round.
Warriors fans are no strangers to early tipoff times on the West Coast. Six trips to the NBA Finals since 2015 have meant a whole bunch of 5 p.m. games, even at home, sending those lucky enough to have tickets scrambling across the Bay Area to Oracle Arena and Chase Center. The NBA also now fills up Saturday and Sunday afternoons with games. But 4:30 p.m. PT is a new frontier for a West Coast team in the modern NBA.
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By the second round of the playoffs, there are only two series per conference, so the league can — and usually does — simply schedule an East game at 4 or 4:30 p.m. and a West game at 6:30 or 7 p.m. each weeknight. (The NBA has almost uniformly stopped scheduling playoff games at 7:30 p.m. Pacific in recent years, ceding to complaints from East Coast fans.)
The first round, with its eight series, is trickier. The league uses more off days on weekdays, stacking up weekend games. Each series that ends is one less puzzle piece to fit in. Had the Cleveland Cavaliers not swept the Miami Heat, the NBA would have had three games on Wednesday, forcing one onto NBA TV.
Because the Lakers-Wolves game is being played in Los Angeles, it gets the late slot while Warriors-Rockets is in Houston and can be played at 6:30 p.m. locally.
