2025-26 regular season: OKC Thunder to face Spurs for 2 straight games around Christmas

As the league enjoys its vacation, the NBA recently dropped the 2025-26 regular season schedule. Teams learned when and where they'll face their opponents during the six-month campaign. Considering how quiet it is, people have plenty of time to dissect trends.

The Oklahoma City Thunder will enter the 2025-26 regular season as the popular title favorite. Fresh off one of the greatest seasons ever, the NBA champions will run it back with mostly the same roster. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren all signed contract extensions this offseason to keep them around for the foreseeable future.

Looking over the Thunder's schedule, the NBA has fully pushed them to the front of the line. They're tied with the Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors and New York Knicks for the most national television games this upcoming season at 34.

This includes the two biggest days of the regular season in Opening Night and Christmas. For the latter, the Thunder will also have an interesting scheduling quirk. They will play the San Antonio Spurs for two straight games in their sole mini-baseball series of the season.

The Thunder will travel to face the Spurs on Tuesday, Dec. 23, at 7:30 p.m. CT. They will then host the Spurs on Thursday, Dec. 25, at 1:30 p.m. CT. The first will be locally televised, while the second matchup will be shown on ABC and ESPN in front of a national audience staying at home for the holidays.

The Thunder play the Spurs two additional times. They will host San Antonio on Tuesday, Jan. 13. OKC then travels back to the Spurs on Wednesday, Feb. 4. That will be the fourth meeting between the two squads during the 2025-26 regular season.

The NBA popularized the two-straight-games method during the COVID-19 pandemic. It allowed teams to face off and meet their opponent quota without the logistics hassles.

While it's a little redundant and takes away some of the pizzazz to schedule the Thunder and Spurs to play each other a couple of days before their Christmas 2025 showdown, there should still be plenty of eyeballs to see Chet Holmgren and Victor Wembanyama face off. And also see Gilgeous-Alexander make his Christmas Day debut.

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: 2025-26 regular season: OKC Thunder to face Spurs for 2 straight games