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 contains 1 team from Canada win every time. 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 New York City, NAB was initially 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 from the 1980s as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Attracting more sports fans to 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 growing 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 introducing the Vancouver Grizzlies as well as 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 created 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 every team with playoffs beginning in the month of April. ESPN is one of the television partners with the NBA carrying news regarding 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 under the ABC umbrella used to broadcast various sports activities.
NBA games can be seen on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Special Edition program is telecast for the days when ESPN hasn’t aired an activity or for the holidays.
ESPN also airs one Conference Final every year that is a part of the NBAs strategy to make sure they are very popular on cable television. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Apart from 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 take up a chunk of ESPNs ratings. It’s mostly in the playoffs and the Conference Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. However, the regular season ratings are almost the same with both sports news providers.
