LeBron James' decision to take his talents to Philadelphia started a frenzy among networks to get the 76ers on their broadcast schedules. NBAE via Getty Images
The NBA’s man (and machine) schedule-makers tapped their fingers all summer. LeBron James had a decision to make — when had we all heard that one before? — which meant Amazon, ESPN, NBC and the league office were texting, emailing, trolling and guessing.
_Back to the Lakers? Back to Cleveland? Back to Miami? Team up with Steph?_
The real face of the league (Commissioner Adam Silver) eventually brought it all up at a CNBC event in New York City on July 16. On a stage, with a grin, he said, “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. … It will influence how we set the schedule, how we set opening week, Christmas Day, etc. So I need him to make a decision.”
Eight days later came the news flash. On a Friday. In the middle of the summer. With TV executives vacationing from Switzerland to the Jersey Shore. With NBA staffers working remotely from home.
_Philadelphia._
There went the weekend.
The NBA schedule is a puzzle, a melodrama, a projection and software platform — especially this past summer of The Decision 3.0. It wasn’t just LeBron to the Sixers, it was Jaylen Brown to Philly, too. It was Giannis Antetokounmpo and Klay Thompson to the Heat, LaMelo Ball to the Timberwolves, Ja Morant to Portland and Gene Li to the Bat Phone.
Li, the NBA’s vice president of broadcast schedule and network lead, was working from home when James announced the 76ers. He found out through the league’s intra-office Slack channel, where there was a lot of shock and awe, and remembers thinking, “Oh, wow.” But then came the texts and calls.
Just by the pure nature of his job title, Li was the one most everyone pinged, along with Senior Vice President/Broadcasting Paul Benedict. TV executives, especially. Suddenly, Sixers-Lakers became one of the marquee broadcast matchups of the season, and the networks began asking for the gift of LeBron vs. Luka. Or LeBron/Jaylen vs. Celtics. Or LeBron vs. _anyone._
“Certainly, a lot of people were asking me, ‘Oh, so it’ll be Philly at New York for opening night, right?’” Li said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, probably.’ That’s a no-brainer matchup at the start of the season.
“We got working right away. We started working internally and also with the networks on finalizing the tentpole schedules and the tentpole matchups. … So a lot of work that Friday over the weekend to build out basically the overall schedule and the national TV schedules.”
They had about 20 days to get it done.
Los Angeles-based Jeff Kaiser, Amazon Prime Video’s head of U.S. sports programming, was the one down the Jersey Shore when LeBron pulled his Philly Special. Ironic, too, that he was staying about an hour from there. Because Philly was a suddenly new NBA epicenter.
All summer long, Prime Video — like ESPN and NBC — had been mapping out 2026-27 scheduling scenarios, one of its themes being: Get every revenge game it could. It had already reached out to Li requesting all the doozies. Antetokounmpo’s return to Milwaukee. Brown’s return to Boston. Morant’s return to Memphis. But now Kaiser says Prime Video immediately “recalibrated” and asked Li, Benedict or David Denenberg, senior vice president of global media distribution and business affairs at NBA Entertainment, for one of the LeBron return games against the Lakers.
“Before LeBron decided to sign with the Sixers, we were probably looking at the Sixers appearing on our schedule somewhere around six or seven times,” Kaiser said, “And then shortly after he announced that he was headed to Philadelphia, we bumped that up to 10 appearances.
“We communicated that with the league, and we worked with them to figure out, one, is that possible? And two, if so, what’s going to be the most impactful way to schedule those Sixers games onto Prime?”
Prime Video landed Giannis Antetokounmpo’s first game back in Milwaukee on Jan. 28. Getty Images
It was obvious to Li — based on all the inbound he was getting — that all of the networks were “big hoop heads” and were only “doing their jobs to try to push for the strongest games.” He says it wasn’t just Prime Video requesting a LeBron-Lakers game, but ESPN and NBC were asking for those, too — not to mention Sixers-Celtics, the Spurs-Knicks NBA Final rematches and the Spurs-Thunder Western Conference Final rematches.
The league would try to make it equitable, but it was now a rush job with the schedule release pegged for Aug. 13. Good thing it wasn’t 1985.
In eras gone by, the schedule was drawn up by hand, courtesy of Matt Winick, the league’s longtime senior vice president of scheduling and game operations, who for 30 years was known as the “Scheduling Czar” or “Human Computer.” But Winick retired in late 2015 and was eventually replaced by machine learning software, or, more specifically, the company Fastbreak AI.
Fastbreak AI had evolved itself. In its early iterations, co-founder and Chief Product Officer Chris Groer says it took “many hours and human intervention” to churn out the maze that is an 82-game NBA schedule. But that changed, he says, when they “invested significant R&D into developing a proprietary new algorithm that can build a 1,200-game schedule while accounting for literally thousands of rules in less than half an hour.”
Less than 30 minutes? While LeBron had everyone twisting in the wind, for instance, Fastbreak AI was able to swiftly create schedule scenarios, in case he went to L.A., Cleveland, Miami or wherever. It gave the league a glimpse. For the first time, there also was “seed creation,” a technology that the NBA’s EVP of Basketball Strategy & Growth Evan Wasch says “could support the matchups and placement of those TV games … speeding up that front-end of the process.” But until LeBron picked the 76ers, it was all still a “what if.”
> “Before LeBron decided to sign with the Sixers, we were probably looking at the Sixers appearing on our schedule somewhere around six or seven times. And then shortly after he announced that he was headed to Philadelphia, we bumped that up to 10 appearances.”
>
> — Jeff Kaiser, Amazon Prime Video
Once James decided, though, Wasch says Fastbreak’s “repair function” meant instead of blowing up the whole schedule, there was an automated way to adjust and move maybe five games around. So an Aug. 13 release was attainable.
Between Prime Video airing games only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; NBC airing games only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Sundays; and ESPN airing games on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, it was also a Rubik’s Cube that could perhaps break someone’s heart.
But, as it turned out, ask and you shall receive. Prime Video received Brown’s first return game to Boston on Jan. 21, along with Antetokounmpo’s first game back in Milwaukee on Jan. 28 and Morant’s first game back in Memphis on Feb. 6. Better yet, it got LeBron returning to Cleveland on Nov. 6 for the NBA Cup and … the Lakers-LeBron game in Philadelphia on March 4.
ESPN got perhaps the most marquee LeBron game of all, Christmas Day in L.A. against the Lakers, not to mention the 76ers and Brown heading to Boston on March 7, a Spurs-Knicks Christmas Day game, Ball’s first game against the Hornets on Jan. 29 and Spurs-Thunder on March 14. NBC got the fortuitous 76ers-Knicks on opening night Oct. 20; two Celtics-76ers clashes Nov. 10 and Feb. 7; Ball’s return game to Charlotte on Feb. 15; a Knicks-Spurs rematch March 7; and LeBron heading back to Cleveland on March 1 for perhaps the last time, if he actually retires.
Which would mean, next summer, not another _Decision?_