The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA comprises of twenty nine teams from North America and has 1 team from Canada betwya.com. It is also a part of the USAB, which is recognized as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Founded in 1946, in New York City, NAB was in fact named the Basketball Association of America. The title changed post their merger together with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA commenced making major sports news from the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Attracting more sports fans with their already expanding database, NBA began expanding by adding 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 interest in 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 very own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada introducing 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 1st week of November and possesses an overall total of 82 games played by every team with playoffs beginning in the month of April. ESPN is among 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 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 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 viewed on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Exclusive edition program is telecast for the days when ESPN has not aired a game or 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 television. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Apart from this ESPN also broadcasts the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Draft.
ESPNs main competition for 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 and the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the standard season ratings are almost identical with both the sports news providers.
