The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and it is one of the main professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA consists of twenty nine teams from North America and has one team from Canada. It is also a member of the USAB, which in turn is recognized as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Created in 1946, in New York City, NAB was initially named the Basketball Association of America. The name changed post their merger with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA commenced making major sports news in the 1980s when the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in additional sports fans with their already expanding database, NBA began growing with the addition of more franchisees. By having the Dallas Mavericks the NBA had a total to 23 teams inside their portfolio with the Lakers being led by Magic Johnson.
The growing interest in the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls in 1984. The NBA fever continued to rise and more and more cities began demanding teams of their own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada adding the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Toronto Raptors with their profile. Later, the Vancouver Grizzlies were moved to Memphis making the Toronto Grizzlies the only team from Canada. The 90s was also a landmark in NBA history as in 1996, NBA came up with the first womens league with the National Womens Basketball Association.
The NBA season begins from the first week of November and possesses a total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs starting in the month of April. ESPN is one of the television partners with the NBA carrying news in connection with the games as well as the players.
The “NBA on ESPN” journey began in 1983 as soon as the NBA games were offered by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They have again started off the NBA games from the 2003 season. ABC Sports aired the games from 2003 until 2006 as “NBA on ABC” till it had been taken by ESPN on ABC. ESPN on ABC is the sports brand under the ABC umbrella used to broadcast various sports activities.
NBA games can be viewed on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Exclusive edition program is telecast for the days when ESPN hasn’t aired an activity or the holidays.
ESPN in addition airs one Conference Final each year that is a section of the NBAs strategy to make them very popular on cable television. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Other than this ESPN also broadcasts the NBA Draft Lottery as well as the NBA Draft.
ESPNs main competitor for the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs most of the major NBA games on the other week nights trying to take up a chunk of ESPNs ratings. It is mostly in the playoffs as well as the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the standard season ratings are almost the same with both the sports news providers.