The Mavericks’ 2025-26 schedule release: An easy early start and a late Luka return to Dallas

The Dallas Mavericks will, next season, play another 82 games. On Thursday, the NBA officially announced the league’s schedule for the 2025-26 season, which means that 80 of the Mavericks’ 82 games are now known. (The final two games will be determined by the In-Season Tournament.) It fills in what had already been reported and announced this past week.

Most notably, Dallas will have a Christmas Day game on the road against the Golden State Warriors, the sixth straight appearance on the holiday slate, and a nationally televised contest on the season’s second day against the San Antonio Spurs, the third consecutive year Dallas has started its season against its most notable rivals. Here are an assortment of additional thoughts about the schedule thus far.

Dallas has an unprecedented home stretch to begin this season. Per Mark Followill, Dallas had never begun a season with more than three consecutive home games. This year, the team will play its first five at the American Airlines Center: vs. San Antonio, vs. Washington, vs. Toronto, vs. Oklahoma City, and vs. Indiana. The last two matchups are back to back.

It’s an early schedule loaded with home games and potentially easier matchups: Dallas has only three road trips, for a total of five games, in its first 18 contests. Of those showdowns, 10 of them come against teams with over-under lines under .500, per FanDuel and DraftKings. So Dallas gets to play more bad teams than good ones mostly at home for a literal month before the schedule begins turning up the difficulty.

That isn’t to say all of the first 18 games will be easy. Even if Dallas wins its first three games, the Thunder on the second night of a back-to-back isn’t much fun. The team’s next back-to-back matchup arrives on Nov. 7 and 8 against the Memphis Grizzlies and, once again, the Wizards. There’s still uncertainty whether Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively II, who both had offseason surgeries, will be available when the season begins. But it’s plausible, even if they are, that the two big men would be sat on the second night of back-to-backs early into the year. All of a sudden, it might be up to Cooper Flagg to earn a win against a Wizards team that’s destined to tank … later. Facing bad teams this early does mean you’ll get more of a legitimate fight than you might several months from now.

Another example of schedule shenanigans: The Mavericks’ first road game on Nov. 1 will be played against the Detroit Pistons in Mexico City, which will be a slightly busier trip with more obligations. It’s fortunate for Dallas that this game will count as one of Detroit’s home games. (Last season, Dallas actually played only 40 games at home due to the In-Season Tournament scheduling.) But it’s an odd outing against a strong opponent where anything could happen. Naji Marshall, do not drink the tap water! Dallas follows up that game with a flight to Houston to face the Rockets. This is a strong contender for an oh-and-two trip.

Dallas won’t see Luka Dončić until 2026. The Mavericks will, to be clear, first playing the Los Angeles Lakers on Nov. 28 — that’s Black Friday — as a group stage game in the In-Season Tournament. (That’s their last In-Season Tournament group game; they also face the Grizzlies, the LA Clippers, and the New Orleans Pelicans.) But, strangely enough, Adam Silver and the NBA did not push what seemed to be the reddest, most obvious button in league history. They did not schedule a Dončić return to Dallas for Christmas. Instead, they opted to cram Dončić’s first return to north Texas into Rivals Week. It’ll go down on Jan. 24 at 8 p.m. Central while being televised on ABC.

The other two Lakers-Mavericks matchups: Feb. 12 in Los Angeles; April 5 in Dallas. Both games in Los Angeles will be aired by Amazon Prime, which has television rights to the league for the first time, which means Dirk Nowitzki will broadcast them. I can’t imagine that was unintentional. But, broadly speaking, I think the league is being generous to the Mavericks. They are plastering these matchups onto primetime, don’t get me wrong, but they are also giving Dallas its chance to change the narrative. Last season, due to the injuries, the ‘Fire Nico’ chants were inevitable. They may yet be this time, too. But if Kyrie Irving returns next season, he’ll at least be available for the final home contest. And we’ll see what a half-season of Cooper Flagg does to the Mavericks fandom. It remains to be seen whether Nico Harrison’s audacious vision works, but the NBA has given his franchise time for it to happen before the Dončić-imposed scrutiny truly shows up.

The Mavericks remain a national television draw. It’s partially due to the trade and probably even more to due with Flagg. The roster’s intriguing, too, of course, even if Irving’s half-season-or-more absence somewhat limits it. Dallas will have 23 nationally televised games; that’s the 10th most in the league, one more than even Victor Wembanyama’s Spurs received this year. The top nine: the Lakers (34), the Warriors (34), the Knicks (34), the Thunder (34), the Rockets (28), the Timberwolves (28), Nuggets (26), the Celtics (25), and the Cavaliers (24).