After avoiding elimination on Tuesday night, the Minnesota Timberwolves look to repeat that accomplishment at home when they take on the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the West finals tonight.
The game is about to start, at 8:30 p.m. ET and will be televised on TNT. But if you’re looking to stream the NBA playoffs without cable, pick a streaming service from the options below quickly so you don’t miss any action.
If you plan on watching the rest of this series and the NBA finals (which go from June 6 through June 23 at the latest) the cheapest, non-free-trial way to do that is through Sling TV. And it’s not really close.
The “Sling Orange+Blue” channel package is currently on sale for just $30 for your first month (it’s regularly $55 per month, which is still cheaper than any other live-TV streaming service). This will get you TNT for tonight’s game and any other West finals games, as well as ESPN3, which will simulcast all the NBA finals games on ABC.
If you just want to watch the West finals, all you would need is “Sling Blue,” which includes TNT and only costs $15 for your first month.
YouTube TV (“Base Plan”) and DirecTV Stream (“Entertainment” channel package or above) both include TNT, and they both come with a free five-day trial. That means you can sign up, watch tonight’s game (as well as Games 6 and 7 if those become necessary), and then cancel your subscription without paying anything.
If you also plan on watching the NBA finals, these free trials won’t quite get you that far, so we would still go with Sling as the best long-term value. But if you’re just wanting a live stream of this specific game for free, then both YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream are perfect options.
Every TNT game streams live on Max, which costs just $10 per month. This would be your best option if you’ve already used up your free trials of YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, and you don’t want to watch the NBA finals (those games don’t stream on Max). Essentially, if you’re just looking for the cheapest, non-free-trial option for watching any West finals games, then this is the way to go.
There is the chance that you pay for a month and only get to watch one game, but there’s other live sports (such as the NHL playoffs) and tons of on-demand TV shows and movies, so you don’t have to worry about not getting your money’s worth.
All of the streaming services we just covered are US-only, but you can get around that little issue if you use a virtual private network (VPN). These services will hide your IP address (and thus, your location) and connect you to a digital server somewhere else in the world. This makes it look like you’re actually in a different country, letting you access location-restricted content from pretty much wherever you want.
NordVPN is safe, it maintains fast speeds for streaming, it can work on any of your devices and it’s easy to use. That’s why it’s at the peak of our rankings of the best VPN services, and that’s why it’s what we would use to watch tonight’s game from abroad.
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.