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 1 team from Canada win every time. 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 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 in the 1980s when the “Magic” Johnson era began. Attracting additional sports fans to 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 inside their portfolio together with the Lakers being led by Magic Johnson.
The growing fascination with 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 from the 1st week of November and has an overall total of 82 games played by every team with playoffs beginning in the month of April. ESPN is among the television partners for 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 offered 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 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 hasn’t aired an activity or for the holidays.
ESPN also airs one Conference Final each year that is a part of the NBAs strategy to make sure they are more 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 main competition for 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’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.