When the NBA’s regular season ended on Sunday night, the league released half of the schedule for this coming weekend’s Game 1s, but left Sunday’s game times and networks all as TBD.
That was because they were waiting on what would happen in the Cavs-Nets play-in game on Tuesday night, as they wanted to put a Nets-Celtics game (or Nets-Heat) in the lone network TV spot on ABC on Sunday afternoon. So, when the final buzzer sounded after Kyrie Irving led the Nets to a 115-108 win over Cleveland, the league quickly put out the Sunday TV schedule now that Nets-Celtics was locked in as the 2-7 series in the East.
Schedule update for Game 1s of the First Round of the 2022 NBA Playoffs presented by Google Pixel
More information will be provided as it is finalized. pic.twitter.com/K41lWT8REf
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) April 13, 2022
The first game on Sunday will be Miami hosting the winner of Friday’s play-in game in Cleveland, as the Cavs await the winner of Hornets-Hawks, at 1 p.m. ET on TNT. Nets-Celtics takes the 3:30 p.m. ET slot on ABC, followed by Bulls-Bucks at 6:30 p.m. ET on TNT and the Suns at 9:00 p.m. ET, also on TNT.
The rest of the playoff schedule figures to be released once the play-in tournament concludes and all 16 teams are known, but for now we at least know when teams will play their first round openers this coming weekend on ESPN, TNT, and ABC.