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 sportfanatick.com. It is also a part of the USAB, which in turn is regarded as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Created 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 commenced making major sports news in the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Attracting additional sports fans to 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 increasing 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 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 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 in the 1st week of November and has an overall total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs starting in the month of April. ESPN is among the television partners for the NBA carrying news in connection with the games as well as 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 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 sporting events.
NBA games can be viewed on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Special Edition program is telecast for the days when ESPN has not 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 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 as well as the NBA Draft.
ESPNs principal 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 in 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.