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 contains one team from Canada http://19casino.com. It is also a member of the USAB, which is regarded as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Created in 1946, in Ny city, NAB was in fact named the Basketball Association of America. The name changed post their merger together 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 expanding with the addition of more franchisees. By having the Dallas Mavericks the NBA had a total to 23 teams inside 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 elevate plus more and more cities began demanding teams of their own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada adding 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 had also been a landmark in NBA history as in 1996, NBA created 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 starting in the month of April. ESPN is one of the television partners for the NBA carrying news regarding 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 off 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 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 a game or for the holidays.
ESPN also airs one Conference Final every year which is a part of the NBAs strategy to make sure they are very popular on cable TV. 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 competitor to the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs most of the major NBA games on the other week nights looking to fill up a chunk of ESPNs ratings. It is mostly in the playoffs as well as the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the standard season ratings are almost identical with both the sports news providers.