The National basketball Association is North Americas professional basketball league and is one of the major professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA consists of twenty nine teams from North America and contains one team from Canada Www.betwya.com. 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. Founded in 1946, in Ny city, NAB was initially named the Basketball Association of America. The title changed post their merger with the National Basketball League in 1949.
NBA began 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 rise and more and more cities began demanding teams of their very own. It was in 1995 that NBA expanded into Canada adding the Vancouver Grizzlies and 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 from the 1st 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 one of the television partners for the NBA carrying news in connection with 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 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 a game or the holidays.
ESPN in addition airs one Conference Final each year that is a part of the NBAs strategy to make them very popular on cable television. 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 competitor for 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 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.