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 1 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 commenced making major sports news in the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in more 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 in 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 in 1984. The NBA fever continued to rise plus more and even more cities began demanding teams of their very own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada adding the Vancouver Grizzlies as well as the Toronto Raptors to 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 possesses an overall total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs starting 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 offered by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They’ve 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 seen 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 each year that is a section of the NBAs strategy to make sure they are more popular on cable TV. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Other than this ESPN also broadcasts the NBA Draft Lottery as well as the NBA Draft.
ESPNs main competition to the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs the vast majority of 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 standard season ratings are almost the same with both sports news providers.