The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA consists of 29 teams from North America and contains one team from Canada www.sportfanatick.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 Ny city, NAB was initially called 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. 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 increasing fascination with the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls back 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 as well as 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 had also been 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 has an overall total of 82 games played by every team with playoffs starting in the month of April. ESPN is among 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 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’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 was taken by ESPN on ABC. ESPN on ABC is the sports brand within the ABC umbrella used to broadcast various sporting events.
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 an activity or the holidays.
ESPN in addition airs one Conference Final each year that is a section of the NBAs strategy to make sure they are more 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 principal competitor to 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’s mostly during the playoffs and the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the regular season ratings are almost the same with both the sports news providers.