r/nbastreams was removed in August 2019 with more than 400,000 subscribers. Seven years on, people still search for it, and what has taken its place is considerably worse.
Written by Tom Redmond. Fact-checked by Marcus Okafor. Rights and pricing are reviewed monthly. We do not host video and we do not link to unauthorized streams.
For several NBA seasons, r/nbastreams was the default way a large number of fans watched basketball. Users posted links to feeds each night, and moderators kept the threads organized by game.
Reddit removed it in August 2019 after repeated violations of its copyright policy, following sustained takedown pressure from the league. The subreddit had more than 400,000 subscribers at the time, per The Daily Dot and Sports Illustrated.
The removal came immediately after the 2019 Finals, which was not a coincidence. Takedown requests had reached a volume Reddit was no longer willing to absorb.
The audience moved to standalone aggregator sites, many of which adopted the community names to capture the search traffic. That trade lost the one thing that made the subreddit tolerable, which was moderation.
A moderated thread had users flagging feeds that carried malware or hijacked the browser. A standalone aggregator has an advertising contract and no incentive to police any of it.
Those replacements have since had a difficult two years. CrackStreams and MethStreams went dark on 30 December 2024, per Front Office Sports, and the largest network in the category was dismantled in September 2025, with its operators facing trial in Egypt, per The New York Times.
The sites now carrying those familiar names are mostly unaffiliated clones. We document each one on the alternatives index, without linking to any of them.
The team and league communities never went anywhere, and they remain the best live conversation about a basketball game anywhere on the internet.
Game threads, post-game threads, tactical breakdowns and injury discussion are all still there, and all still free. What is gone is the video.
The reasonable setup in 2026 is a game thread for the conversation, a legal stream for the video, and a scoreboard for the data. That last part is what this site is for.
Everything the stream communities carried has a licensed route, and the NBA one has changed substantially since 2019.
Reddit removed it in August 2019 for repeated violations of its copyright infringement policy, after sustained takedown pressure from the NBA. It had more than 400,000 subscribers.
Communities that try to fill the role get removed under the same policy. The team and league subreddits remain active and are still the best place for game conversation.
Several have closed. CrackStreams and MethStreams went dark on 30 December 2024, and the largest network in the category was dismantled in September 2025 with its operators facing trial.
For the NBA, the national partners in market and League Pass out of market. For most of the rest of the world, a licensed operator stream. Our NBA streams page has the detail.
On this site. Every fixture, score, standing, head-to-head record and form line is free with no account.
Streaming with a licensed operator means opening a betting account. Deposit only what you can afford to lose, and set a deposit limit before your first deposit. Responsible gaming controls and helplines.
