The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and it is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA consists of twenty nine teams from North America and contains one team from Canada. It is additionally 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 called the Basketball Association of America. The name changed post their merger together with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA began making major sports news from the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Attracting additional sports fans with 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 increasing fascination with the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls in 1984. The NBA fever continued to elevate and more and even more cities began demanding teams of their 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 sole 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 from the 1st week of November and has a total of 82 games played by every 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 in addition to the players.
The “NBA on ESPN” journey began in 1983 when the NBA games were offered by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They’ve again started the NBA games through 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 within 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 a game or for the holidays.
ESPN also airs one Conference Final each year that is a part of the NBAs tactic to make sure they are very popular on cable television. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Other than this ESPN also broadcasts the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Draft.
ESPNs main competitor for the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs the vast majority of major NBA games on the other week nights trying to fill up a chunk of ESPNs ratings. It is mostly during the playoffs as well as the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the regular season ratings are almost identical with both sports news providers.