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 comprises of 29 teams from North America and has one team from Canada. It is additionally a part of the USAB, which in turn is recognized as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Created in 1946, in Ny city, NAB was initially called the Basketball Association of America. The title changed post their merger with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA commenced making major sports news from the 1980s when the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in more sports fans to their already expanding database, NBA began expanding 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 fascination with the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls back in 1984. The NBA fever continued to elevate and more and even more cities began demanding teams of their very own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada adding the Vancouver Grizzlies as well as the Toronto Raptors to 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 created the first womens league with the National Womens Basketball Association.
The NBA season begins in the first week of November and has an overall total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs beginning in the month of April. ESPN is one of the television partners for the NBA carrying news regarding the games as well as the players.
The “NBA on ESPN” journey began in 1983 as soon as the NBA games were presented 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 seen on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Exclusive edition program is telecast for the days when ESPN hasn’t aired an activity or for the holidays.
ESPN also airs one Conference Final every year which is a part of the NBAs strategy to make them more popular on cable TV. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Other than this ESPN also broadcasts the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Draft.
ESPNs principal competition to the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs the vast majority of major NBA games on the other week nights looking to take up a chunk of ESPNs ratings. It’s mostly in the playoffs as well as the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the standard season ratings are almost identical with both the sports news providers.