ESPN as the television associate of nba to deliver sports news.
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 twenty nine teams from North America and contains one team from Canada. It is additionally a part of the USAB, which in turn is regarded as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Founded in 1946, in New York City, NAB was in fact called the Basketball Association of America. The title changed post their merger together with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA began making major sports news from the 1980s when the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in more sports fans with their already expanding database, NBA began growing with the addition of more franchisees. With the addition of the Dallas Mavericks the NBA had a total to 23 teams in 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 very own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada adding the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Toronto Raptors to their profile. Later, the Vancouver Grizzlies were transferred 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 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 when the NBA games were presented by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They’ve 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 within 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 a game or for the holidays.
ESPN in addition 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. Apart from 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 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.
