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 also a member 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 in fact named the Basketball Association of America. The name changed post their merger with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA began making major sports news from the 1980s when the “Magic” Johnson era began. Attracting more sports fans to their already expanding database, NBA began growing 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 growing interest in the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls back in 1984. The NBA fever continued to elevate plus 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 to 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 in the 1st week of November and has a total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs beginning 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 when the NBA games were offered by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They have again started the NBA games through 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 under 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 an activity or the holidays.
ESPN in addition airs one Conference Final every year which is a section of the NBAs tactic to make them very 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 competitor to 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’s mostly during the playoffs as well as the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the regular season ratings are almost the same with both the sports news providers.