BA
SKET
BALL.
No, those aren’t the dulcet tones of Kurtis Blow you’re hearing. It’s just me being really excited because the 2022 NBA playoffs are finally upon us. The festivities officially tip off on Saturday, April 16, followed by several weeks of high-stakes hooping that will culminate in the Finals in June.
Let’s cut to the chase: You can stream every single NBA playoff game online without the need for a cable subscription, but to do so legally, it’ll cost you some money. Here’s how to catch all the action without the burden of a cable bill.
Which channels do I need to watch the NBA playoffs?
As usual, the bulk of the NBA playoffs will air on three channels:
In previous years, some games (usually just in the first round) have also aired on NBA TV. A glance at the TV schedule at the time of writing doesn’t show any first-round games airing on the league’s proprietary network. Still, it’s possible you’ll need access to NBA TV to see a couple of playoff games. It’s available as a standalone streaming service for $6.99/mo.
Beyond that, the challenge of watching sports online remains the same as ever: Finding a streaming service that carries all three of the main networks without setting your bank account on fire.
Which services carry those channels?
To keep things simple, we’ll stick with a duo of streaming services that will each get you the necessary channels to watch the NBA playoffs without dealing with too many supplementary options. The two least complicated routes to watching the NBA playoffs without cable are:
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YouTube TV: $65/mo and carries ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV
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Sling Orange with the Sports Extra add-on: $46/mo and carries ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV
Sling is obviously the more preferable of the two, given that its monthly cost is almost $20 less than YouTube TV. You’ll just have to choose Orange as your bundle when you sign up, and when presented with add-ons, choose Sports Extra (just follow the instructions upon sign-up and this is easy) to get everything. The one caveat here is that Sling doesn’t offer ABC natively as a local network; instead, games on ABC will stream via the ESPN3 channel. The end result is the same, you’ll just have to search through the channel guide to find it.
YouTube TV is much more straightforward. Pay the fee and you get everything the way you’d expect to get it. That means ABC will show up as your area’s local affiliate, in case you want to catch any other fine ABC programming when the games aren’t on.
Of course, you can always just use someone else’s cable login for every network’s streaming app if you have one. However you have to watch the games, you don’t want to miss every Ja Morant dunk that’s coming our way in the playoffs.
