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 one team from Canada 19casino.com. It is also a part of the USAB, which 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 began making major sports news from the 1980s when the “Magic” Johnson era began. Bringing in 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 increasing interest in the league was further propelled when Michael Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls back in 1984. The NBA fever continued to rise and 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 with their profile. Later, the Vancouver Grizzlies were moved to Memphis making the Toronto Grizzlies the sole 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 1st week of November and has a 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 in addition to the players.
The “NBA on ESPN” journey began in 1983 as soon as the NBA games were presented by ESPN through their televised cable network. ESPN continued the NBA sports news broadcasting till 1984. They have again started 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 sporting events.
NBA games can be viewed 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 in addition airs one Conference Final each year which is a section 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 and the NBA Draft.
ESPNs principal competition to the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs the vast majority of major NBA games on the other week nights trying to take up a chunk of ESPNs ratings. It is 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.
