Just four wins away from immortality, the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks meet tonight at the TD Garden for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Boston won both head-to-head meetings this year, but Dallas is peaking at the perfect time after knocking off the 1, 3 and 4 seeds to get here.
Game 1 is about to begin, at 8:30 p.m. ET, and will be televised nationally on ABC. However, if you don’t have cable and want a way to stream the NBA playoffs, we’ve found all the best options for watching the Mavs vs Celtics live online.
Taking free trials out of the equation, Sling TV is the cheapest way to watch every game of the NBA Finals, which will all be televised on ABC. Sling only has ABC available in a very few number of markets, but the “Sling Orange” package includes ESPN3, which simulcasts all ABC games.
The “Sling Orange” channel package is normally $40 per month–which is already cheaper than any live-TV streaming service with ABC–but it’s currently being offered for just $20 for your first month. Again, it doesn’t come with a free trial, but any other free trial will only last five or seven days, while the entirety of the NBA finals could go for up to 17 days. There is no cheaper way to watch every game than with Sling.
If you want to watch Game 1 for free, you can do so with a free trial to Fubo (“Pro” plan), YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) or DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” plan or above). All of them include ABC in most markets.
The Fubo free trial is seven days long, while YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream are both five. That means that if you haven’t used any of these services before, you could stagger each of the three free trials and get 17 days of live streaming at no cost. If the finals go seven games, it will last a total of 17 days.
If you’re outside of the United States and don’t have any way to watch a live stream of the game, you could combine one of the aforementioned streaming services with a virtual private network (VPN). All of those live-TV services are US only, but a VPN helps you access them from abroad by hiding your location and connecting you to a digital server in the United States.
NordVPN is easy to use, it’s currently on sale and it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That’s what we would use to watch this game from abroad, but you can also take a look at our guides to the best VPN services or the best VPN deals.
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.