NBA TV is the oldest subscription network in North America to be owned or controlled by a professional sports league, having launched on November 2, 1999.

[1] The network launched on November 2, 1999[2] as nba.com TV; the channel, which was renamed to the second and current name on 11 February 2003, originally operated from studio facilities housed at NBA Entertainment in Secaucus, New Jersey.

The network signed a multi-year carriage agreement with three of the U.S.'s five largest cable providers, Cox Communications, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, on June 28, 2003; this expanded the network's reach to 45 million pay television households in the U.S., in addition to distribution in 30 countries worldwide.

The network mainly launched with two purposes; to serve as a barker channel for the league's out-of-market sports package NBA League Pass, along with featuring statistical and scoring information which was more easily accessible in the pre-broadband age, and it featured mainly archival content from the NBA Entertainment archives in its upper pane to fill programming time.

In 2024, the NBA signed a new media rights deal with ABC/ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime Video beginning in the 2025–26 season, ending TNT's broadcasting relationship with the league.

[13] On October 29, 2010, AT&T U-verse reached a carriage deal to carry the channel's standard and high definition feeds.

The network also shows international games, typically on Saturday evenings, with special emphasis on the Euroleague and the Maccabi Tel Aviv team from Israel.

The show airs live six days a week, deferring any TNT game nights outside the playoffs to repeating that evening's edition of Inside the NBA.

[18] With TNT moving its marquee games to Tuesdays in 2021 during the NFL regular season (thus avoiding competition with Thursday Night Football), NBA TV Center Court was moved to Monday nights for most of the season, though it would continue to air select broadcasts on Tuesdays when TNT has other programming commitments.

Beginning 2021, NBA TV began to broadcast a package of men's and women's Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) college basketball games in February as an observance of Black History Month.

Jalen Rose 2024- present Vince Carter 2024- present NBA TV International is a feed of NBA TV available in countries outside the United States, utilizing the same studio for analysis and commentary segments and taped programming (except for FIBA events and highlights), but largely airs a different lineup of games than the U.S. channel.

[23][24] Beginning with the 2011–12 playoffs, NBA TV began to produce a full and neutral national broadcast for those games.