The National basketball Association is North America’s professional basketball league and is one of the foremost professional sports leagues of North America. The NBA comprises of twenty nine teams from North America and has one team from Canada. 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. Founded in 1946, in New York City, NAB was initially called the Basketball Association of America. The name changed post their merger with the National Basketball League in 1949.

NBA started making foremost sports news in the 1980’s when the “Magic” Johnson era started. Attracting more sports fans to their already expanding database, NBA started expanding by adding more franchisees. With the addition of the Dallas Mavericks the NBA had a total to 23 teams in their portfolio 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 started demanding teams of their 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 went to Memphis making the Toronto Grizzlies the only team from Canada. The 90’s was also a landmark in NBA history as in 1996, NBA made the first women’s league with the National Women’s Basketball Association.

The NBA time of year starts in the first week of November and has a total of 82 games played by each team with playoffs commencement in the month of April. ESPN is one of the television partners for the NBA carrying news a propos the games as well as the players.

The “NBA on ESPN” journey started 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 have again started the NBA games from the 2003 time of year. 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 strain under the ABC umbrella used to broadcast various sporting actions.
NBA games can be viewed on ESPN of Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. NBA Special Edition curriculum is telecast for the days when ESPN has not aired a game or for the holidays.

ESPN also airs one Talks Final each year which is a part of the NBA’s strategy to make them more well loved on cable TV. The playoffs are telecast on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Apart from this ESPN also broadcasts the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Draft.
ESPN’s main competitor for the NBA games is TNT. TNT airs most of the foremost NBA games on the other week nights trying to take up a chunk of ESPN’s ratings. It is mostly during the playoffs and the Talks Finals that TBNT garners higher ratings. But, the fixed time of year ratings are nearly the same with both the sports news providers.