The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and is one of the main professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA consists of twenty nine teams from North America and has one team from Canada. It is additionally a part of the USAB, which in turn is regarded as the National Governing Body for basketball by the International Basketball Federation. Created in 1946, in New York City, NAB was initially called 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 as soon as the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in more sports fans to their already expanding database, NBA began growing with the addition of more franchisees. By having the Dallas Mavericks the NBA had a total to 23 teams inside their portfolio with the Lakers being led by Magic Johnson.
The increasing interest in 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 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 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 from the first week of November and has an overall total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs starting in the month of April. ESPN is among 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 off the NBA games through the 2003 season. ABC Sports aired the games from 2003 until 2006 as “NBA on ABC” till it had been 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 viewed on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Special Edition program is telecast for the days when ESPN has not aired an activity or for the holidays.
ESPN also airs one Conference Final every year which is a section of the NBAs tactic to make them more 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 main competition for the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs most of the major NBA games on the other week nights trying 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 regular season ratings are almost identical with both sports news providers.