The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and it is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA consists of 29 teams from North America and has 1 team from Canada. It is also a member of the USAB, which in turn is recognized 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 title changed post their merger together with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA commenced making major sports news in the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in additional sports fans with their already expanding database, NBA began growing by adding 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 increasing fascination with the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls back in 1984. The NBA fever continued to elevate and 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 as well as 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 came up with the first womens league with the National Womens Basketball Association.
The NBA season begins in the first week of November and has an overall total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs beginning in the month of April. ESPN is one of the television partners with the NBA carrying news regarding the games as well as the players.
The “NBA on ESPN” journey began in 1983 when the NBA games were presented by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They’ve again started 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 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 has not aired a game or for the holidays.
ESPN in addition airs one Conference Final each year that is a part of the NBAs tactic to make them 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 principal competitor 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 is 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.