In a battle of MVP candidates, Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks head to Oklahoma City to take on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder tonight.
Mavericks vs Thunder is about to kick off, at 10:00 p.m. ET, and will be televised nationally on TNT in the United States. If you’re looking to watch a live stream, there are a number of different ways you can do that, including some free options.
If you want a couple of free options, we have those for you in the next section. If you want the cheapest way–by far–to watch nationally televised NBA games for the rest of the season, then you should check out Sling TV.
The “Sling Orange” channel plan only comes with 31 total channels, but it has TNT, ESPN and ESPN3 (which simulcasts NBA on ABC games) for the biggest NBA games, and it’s just $40 per month. That’s already cheaper than any other streaming service with these channels, but it’s also on sale for half that–$20–for your first month.
We have two options for watching a free live stream of the Mavericks vs Thunder:
YouTube TV: The “Base Plan” includes TNT and 100-plus other channels. It’s $63 per month for your first three months, but you can watch for free for five days before you either cancel your subscription or pay.
DirecTV Stream: There are four different channel packages to choose from here, but all of them come with TNT. The cheapest, “Entertainment,” includes about 75-plus channels and costs $80 per month, but it also comes with a free five-day trial, allowing to watch tonight’s game at no cost.
This is sort of a free option if you look at it from the right angle. If you’re a subscriber to Max, you can watch all NBA on TNT games via the B/R Sports add-on, which will at some point cost an extra $10 per month but is currently available for free for a limited time.
You don’t need to do anything with your Max subscription. The game is simply available under the B/R Sports tab, which is located on the Max website or app.
If you don’t have Max, it costs $10 to sign up and doesn’t come with a free trial. This is where it becomes a non-free option, but it’s still nevertheless a pretty cheap option for watching TNT games.
A virtual private network–there are lots of good ones, but NordVPN is our recommendation–is needed if you want to watch the game via any of the aforementioned streaming services from outside of the United States. VPN’s hide your IP address/location, allowing you to bypass geo-locks and stream content from another country as if you were physically located there.
We’ve put together lists of the best VPN services and best VPN deals if you’re looking for some alternative options.
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.