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 one team from Canada. It is additionally a member 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 initially called the Basketball Association of America. The title changed post their merger with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA began making major sports news in the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in more sports fans with their already expanding database, NBA began expanding with the addition of more franchisees. With the addition of the Dallas Mavericks the NBA had a total to 23 teams in their portfolio together 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 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 came up with 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 among the television partners with the NBA carrying news regarding the games in addition to the players.
The “NBA on ESPN” journey began in 1983 as soon as 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 under the ABC umbrella used to broadcast various sporting events.
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 the holidays.
ESPN in addition airs one Conference Final every year which is a section of the NBAs tactic to make sure they are very 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 main competition 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 is mostly during 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.
