Cooper Flagg’s first NBA game has a date, as does his return trip to New England with the Dallas Mavericks.

NBA schedules were released Thursday, and Flagg, the Newport native taken first overall by Dallas in the NBA draft in June, will make his formal debut Oct. 22 when the Mavericks host the San Antonio Spurs at 9:30 p.m. on ESPN. The game will provide a marquee first appearance, as Flagg will take the court against budding superstar Victor Wembanyama in a matchup of two of the last three players chosen No. 1 overall in the draft.

Flagg and the Mavericks will play the Boston Celtics twice. Dallas will host Boston on Feb. 3 at 8 p.m., then will visit the Celtics on March 6 at 7 p.m., with ESPN broadcasting the game.

Last year, Duke’s game at Boston College drew a mass of Maine fans to watch Flagg in action.

Other notable games for Flagg and the Mavericks include ones against defending champion Oklahoma City (home on Oct. 27, away on Dec. 5, home on March 1); and against LeBron James, former Mavericks star Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers (away on Nov. 28, home on Jan. 24, away on Feb. 12, home on April 5). Dallas also has a Christmas Day showdown in San Francisco against Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors.

The Celtics, meanwhile, will host the Philadelphia 76ers in their season opener on Oct. 22.

The NBA unveiled its full schedule for the 2025-26 season on Thursday, confirming that each NBA team will have at least two national TV games.

The reason: There simply are more national games than ever, now that the league’s 11-year, $76 billion agreements with ABC-ESPN, NBC-Peacock and Amazon Prime Video are about to formally begin.

There will be 247 games scheduled on those networks this season, up from 172 last season between ABC, ESPN and TNT.

The final day of the regular season is April 12, and all 30 teams will be playing. But the league is rolling back the start times; all games were at either 1 p.m. or 3:30 p.m. last season, but will be either 6 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. this season.

One advantage to that: All games will end, and some will be played in their entirety, after the final putt drops in the final round of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club that same day. The Masters typically ends around 7 p.m.

All 30 teams also will play on Friday, April 10. There are no games on Saturday, April 11. The play-in tournament begins on April 14.

The league tried again this season to minimize back-to-backs (the average is just under 15 of those per team) in an effort to keep teams as rested as possible.

That rule also will apply to marquee games. No teams will play back-to-back during opening week, the NBA Cup tournament, Christmas Day (nobody plays on Dec. 24), the four games on Peacock or NBC on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the 10-game ABC Saturday schedule, the eight-game ABC Sunday schedule or the 11-game NBC Sunday schedule.

Oklahoma City and Indiana won’t wait long for a rematch of last season’s NBA Finals. The Thunder go to Indianapolis on Oct. 23.

The Pacers visit Oklahoma City on Jan. 23.

– Materials from the Associated Press were used in this report