NBA Arena Trips: See the League's Best Buildings

Last updated November 2026 · Examples pulled from this site's live 2026-27 schedules on November 3, 2026

Baseball is dark until spring, but the NBA plays almost every night from October to April — and its 30 arenas range from the most famous room in sports to a building that opened last year. Here's how to chase them: the cathedrals first, the two-team cities second, and the calendar always.

The buildings to build a trip around

Madison Square Garden (Knicks, New York). The pilgrimage. The current Garden opened in 1968 — the league's oldest arena — then was rebuilt inside during 2011-13, adding the glass Chase Bridges that hang over the court. Ride the escalators to the top, eat the Carnegie Deli pastrami (the last one left anywhere), and remember you're standing on top of Penn Station.

Intuit Dome (Clippers, Inglewood). The opposite end of history: opened in 2024, the newest building in the league and the Clippers' first home of their own. The Wall — 51 straight rows of diehards behind one basket, no suites breaking it up — and a halo board the size of a small building make it the modern spectacle.

United Center (Bulls, Chicago). The biggest room in the NBA at 20,917 seats, with Jordan's statue mid-dunk in the atrium. Size plus history makes Chicago the Midwest's essential stop.

Chase Center (Warriors, San Francisco). The gleaming 2019 waterfront arena — and a food program built on real Bay Area restaurants, headlined by Bakesale Betty's fried chicken sandwich.

TD Garden (Celtics, Boston) and Crypto.com Arena (Lakers, Los Angeles) round out the classic tier: Boston for banners and Bobby Orr downstairs (the Bruins share the building), L.A. for the statue garden out front and LudoBird's fried chicken inside.

The two-team metros: one hotel, two arenas

Two NBA metros give you two buildings on one trip without changing hotels:

• New York: Knicks at the Garden in Manhattan, Nets at Barclays Center in Brooklyn — a subway ride apart, and the two most transit-friendly arenas in the league.
• Los Angeles: Lakers downtown at Crypto.com Arena, Clippers in Inglewood at Intuit Dome — about 10 miles apart. Two nights, the oldest-school glamour and the newest building in the sport.

And then there's the real cheat code: eleven buildings host both an NBA and an NHL team — TD Garden, Madison Square Garden, United Center, Scotiabank Arena, Ball Arena, Delta Center, Little Caesars Arena, American Airlines Center, Capital One Arena, Crypto.com Arena and Xfinity Mobile Arena. On the right weekend you can watch basketball and hockey in the same seats on back-to-back nights. We counted the schedule: between November and January alone there are 60 Friday-to-Sunday windows where some metro has both its NBA and NHL teams home.

A real weekend, from the live schedule

New York, November 20-22, 2026 — pulled from this site's schedules today:

• Saturday Nov 21: Orlando Magic at Brooklyn Nets — Barclays Center
• Sunday Nov 22 (afternoon slot): Portland Trail Blazers at New York Knicks — Madison Square Garden
• Sunday Nov 22: Carolina Hurricanes at New York Rangers — also Madison Square Garden

Three games, two arenas, one subway pass — and the Sunday double is in the same building: basketball, then the floor comes up and the Rangers skate. One hotel near Penn Station puts you on top of the Garden and one train from Brooklyn.

How to run it with the Trip Finder

1. Open the Trip Finder and pick a region — New York Metro, California, Texas, New England — or hand-pick the teams whose buildings you want.
2. Leave both leagues in play: mixing NBA and NHL teams in one search is what surfaces the shared-building doubles.
3. Set 3-4 days. Arena trips chain tighter than ballpark trips — the buildings cluster downtown and the schedules are dense, so a long weekend usually covers two or three teams.
4. Book the anchor game first (the Garden, the Wall, a rivalry), then the hotel — every game page on this site carries pre-filled stays by the arena.

Each team's page here now carries the arena's facts, signature food and don't-miss highlights — start with the Knicks or browse the full NBA schedule list. Hockey fan too? The companion piece is the NHL Arena Trips guide.