How to watch the NBA without spoilers

By Vivek Tanna · Published November 12, 2026

The NBA is built for watching late. There are games almost every night, most of them start while you're making dinner, and the West Coast games tip after the East Coast has gone to bed. Plenty of us watch the night's best game the next morning. The trouble is that a box score is one tap away on every app you own.

Here's where NBA results leak, and what I'd switch off.

When the games are

From our own schedule this season, in US Eastern time:

• Weeknights: most games tip between 7pm and 8pm.
• West Coast games: 10pm or 10:30pm, which means a finish after 12:30am ET.
• Sundays: afternoon and early-evening games, often 3:30pm and 6pm, plus a night slate.

So if you're on the East Coast and watch a 10:30pm tip the next morning, the result has had all night to land in your apps. On the West Coast, the 7pm ET games start at 4pm, while you're still at work.

Where the result leaks

The NBA App and League Pass

The NBA App and NBA.com have a Hide Scores setting, and it's worth turning on if you watch through League Pass. The NBA's own help center notes that it doesn't cover everything: articles and headlines on the app's home page can still give results away. Turn the setting on, then go to the game you want and skip the home feed.

Push alerts

Team apps send final scores. News apps send big performances. Fantasy apps tell you a player just hit a double-double, which tells you how the game is going. Turn them off for the night. On iPhone, open Settings, tap Apps, tap the app, tap Notifications, and turn Allow Notifications off.

YouTube TV

If you watch national games through YouTube TV, Google's help center describes a setting to hide scores: open a team or league page, select More, and turn on Hide all scores for this team/league. The NBA has team pages, so you hide scores team by team. Google says the setting applies across all your devices.

YouTube recommendations

Highlights go up within minutes of the final buzzer, and the thumbnails are the dunk, the game-winner, or a player with a big number next to his face. If you've watched NBA clips before, they'll be on your Home page in the morning. YouTube's help center gives you a few fixes:

• On a video's three-dot menu, choose Not interested or Don't recommend channel.
• Set a channel's notification bell to None.
• Turn off watch history. YouTube says that if you don't want video recommendations on Home, you can delete and turn off watch history.

The replay itself

This is the NBA-specific trap. A replay's length gives away overtime. If the progress bar is longer than a normal game, you know it went to OT, and you probably know it was close. Don't look at the runtime before you start, and avoid scrubbing near the end.

Standings, stats and fantasy

Standings and team records change at the buzzer, so a team going from 8-5 to 9-5 is a spoiler. A player's season averages on a stats tab move the same way. Your fantasy matchup is worse: it's a live box score for every player you roster. Don't open it until you've watched.

Widgets and Live Activities

A scores widget on your Lock Screen or Home Screen shows the result before you've unlocked the phone. Touch and hold the widget, tap Remove Widget, and confirm. For the Lock Screen, edit it and remove the widget there.

Some apps start a Live Activity for a team you follow and keep it on the Lock Screen through the fourth quarter. In Settings, each app that uses them has an Allow Live Activities switch. Turn it off for every basketball app you have.

Group chats and social feeds

Big NBA nights blow up group chats and social feeds, usually with a stat line in the first sentence. Mute the chat until you've watched and tell people you're on delay. Muting a player's name on social media won't catch a clip, so close the apps.

Smart speakers

If your morning routine plays a sports update, it will read you last night's scores. Skip it the morning you're catching up.

A game-night checklist

1. Turn on Hide Scores in the NBA App and stay off its home feed.
2. Turn off notifications for team, news and fantasy apps.
3. If you use YouTube TV, hide scores for the teams you're watching.
4. Remove scores widgets and turn off Live Activities for basketball apps.
5. Mute the group chat and skip the morning briefing.
6. Don't look at the replay's runtime.

Our take

On a busy NBA night there are more games than anyone can watch, and the one worth your time isn't always the one on national TV. That's why I built Hide Scores into The Lineup Is. Turn it on and results stay off the app, the lock screen, notifications, widgets and Siri, but you can still see which games are worth watching. So you can find last night's best game without learning who won it. It's free. Here's how Hide Scores works, and the NBA page shows tonight's games.

Sources: tip times from our schedule data for the 2026-27 season so far; the NBA's help center article on Hide Scores; Google's YouTube TV help page on hiding scores; YouTube and Apple support pages, all checked November 11, 2026.

The Lineup Is is an iPhone app that ranks every game by whether it's worth watching, with Hide Scores for when you watch later.

Get The Lineup Is on iOS — free — or see tonight's best games ranked right now. More from the blog.