It’s a battle of NorCal vs. SoCal tonight, as LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers host De’Aaron Fox and the Sacramento Kings. It’s the third time these teams have met this season, with Sacramento taking each of the first two matchups.
The game starts tips off shortly, at 10:30 p.m. ET (7:30 p.m. PT), and will be televised locally on Spectrum SportsNet (Lakers markets) and NBC Sports California (Kings markets). It won’t be televised anywhere else, but there are some ways to watch a live stream of the game whether you’re in or out of market.
There are a lot of different ways you can watch a free live stream of the game, so we’ll split up the options depending on where you live:
If you live in the Lakers market, you can watch the game on DirecTV Stream, which is the only streaming service that has Spectrum Sportsnet. Make sure you select the “Choice” channel package or higher when starting your five-day free trial.
If you live in the Kings market, Fubo (“Pro” plan), YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) and DirecTV Stream (“Choice” plan or higher) all include NBC Sports California (in local markets) and all come with a free trial. The Fubo free trial lasts seven days, while the others are five days each.
If you live outside of those markets, you’ll need NBA League Pass, which has every out-of-market, non-nationally-televised game. There are a lot of ways you can get League Pass for free. It can be included as an add-on to your YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream free trial, or you can get it through the NBA website itself or Amazon Prime Channels. Both of those options include seven-day free trials, as well.
If you live in the United States but are traveling during the time of the game, you can try a virtual private network (VPN) service to watch. The aforementioned streaming services are US-only, but a VPN hides your IP address and connects you to a server somewhere in the US, thus allowing you to use those streaming services as if you were still physically located at home.
NordVPN tops our list of the best VPN services. It’s reliable and fast, plus it has thousands of servers across the world and nearly 2,000 in the US alone, meaning not only can you use it to watch the game from abroad, but you can also connect to a server in a different state to potentially get around local blackouts.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.