The NBA pre-season will tip-off Friday, Dec. 11 and conclude on Saturday, Dec. 19.
Each NBA team will play a minimum of two and a maximum of four games as part of the league’s 49-game preseason schedule. Every team will play at least one home game and one road game in the preseason. The national television schedule for preseason games will be announced at a later date.
The 2020-21 regular season will tip off on Tuesday, Dec. 22 and feature 72 games for each team. As previously announced, the regular-season schedule will be released in two segments. The schedule for the First Half of the season (Dec. 22, 2020 – March 4, 2021) has been released and the schedule for the Second Half of the season (March 11 – May 16, 2021) will be released during the latter part of the First Half portion of the schedule. The Second Half schedule will include the remainder of each team’s 72 games not scheduled in the First Half as well as any games postponed during the First Half that can reasonably be added to the Second Half schedule.
The Lakers beat the Clippers 87-81 on Friday and will play them again on Sunday 12/13 before playing @ the Phoenix Suns twice on Wednesday 12/16 and Friday 12/18 to wrap a very brief pre-season. The regular season opener on Tuesday12/22 will see the Lakers raise yet another banner in front of the Clippers, who continue to take up unwanted residence at Staples.