{"id":185805,"date":"2025-09-27T17:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T17:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/185805\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T17:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T17:44:09","slug":"key-dates-for-the-2025-26-nba-season-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/185805\/","title":{"rendered":"Key dates for the 2025-26 NBA season \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was first published as the Jazz Insiders<\/a> newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Friday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year! The next issue of the Jazz Insiders newsletter will be a dispatch from training camp, which opens on Tuesday. After that is the NBA preseason and then the 2025-26 regular season. Basketball is back.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, it\u2019s a good idea to go over some of the key dates of the NBA calendar for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n

Finalized rosters<\/p>\n

Before the season can begin, NBA teams have to finalize their rosters. This year the deadline is Oct. 20 at 3 p.m. MT. So, teams need to cut down their training camp rosters to 15 (not including two-way deals).<\/p>\n

Opening night<\/p>\n

The 2025-26 season officially begins Oct. 21, but the Utah Jazz will open their season the following night. On Oct. 22 the Jazz will host the Los Angeles Clippers at 7 p.m. MT.<\/p>\n

Rookie scale options<\/p>\n

For players that are on rookie scale deals (players that were selected in the first round of the draft and are still on their first contract), team options for the 2026-27 season<\/a> have to be decided by Oct. 31.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s also the day that the NBA Cup tips off, which I\u2019ll be sure to explain in detail before it starts.<\/p>\n

Guarantee date<\/p>\n

A lot of NBA contracts have specific guarantee dates written into them that determine the date a non-guaranteed or partially-guaranteed player will have his salary fully guaranteed for the remainder of the season. But the final date for that to happen is Jan. 10.<\/p>\n

Trade deadline<\/p>\n

This is probably the biggest date on the NBA calendar. The 2025-26 trade deadline is Feb. 5 at 1 p.m. MT. While there will be some trades made before the date, expect a flurry of activity in the final hours.<\/p>\n

All-Star Weekend<\/p>\n

The 2026 All-Star festivities will be held in Los Angeles, primarily at the Intuit Dome, from Feb. 13-15. This includes the main event All-Star Game as well as the dunk contest, skills challenge, shooting contest and all the other All-Star competitions.<\/p>\n

Regular-season finale<\/p>\n

The last day of the regular season is April 12. For the Jazz, that will likely be the day that all of our collective attention turns to the NBA lottery and the draft. For some other teams, games played on this day and in the days prior could decide playoff positioning and postseason opponents.<\/p>\n

New with the JazzFrom the archivesExtra pointsHow many Jazz players and former Jazzmen are among the NBA\u2019s top 100? (Deseret News<\/a>)Utah Jazz waive KJ Martin (Deseret News<\/a>)See how the Delta Center\u2019s new bleacher system works (Deseret News<\/a>)Around the league<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was first published as the Jazz Insiders newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,3125,21445,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-185805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-news-feed-local","10":"tag-newsletters","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}