Kevin Durant and the small-market Oklahoma City Thunder are the darlings of ABC, according to the NBA national TV schedule.
Durant and the Thunder will appear on ABC six times this season, more than any other team. The games are against six different opponents, with three at home and three on the road.
Among the NBA’s multiple TV partners, ABC is the only network available in every American home with a TV. It is the home of the NBA Finals but not the primary home of regular season games. The network is televising just 15 games this season, and just 10 teams are appearing.
As usual, ABC’s first telecasts of the season are on Christmas. By that time, network partner ESPN will already have televised 27 games.
All of ABC’s ensuing telecasts are in their customary Sunday afternoon slots. However, between Christmas and the end of the season, there are 14 weekends in which ABC is not televising NBA games, which seems like a lot of dark weekends for a hardcore NBA fan.
There are a handful in January, when the NBA would be pitted against the ratings monster of the NFL postseason, and a couple more in March, when the ratings opposition comes from the popular NCAA Tournament.
To ABC’s credit, it has not overloaded its limited schedule with bad teams from the largest markets. The Los Angeles Lakers appear just twice and the New York Knicks once. Both teams missed the playoffs last season and figure to have a tough time making the playoffs this season.
At the same time, the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs – another small-market team – appear just twice on ABC, the same number as the Houston Rockets. And ABC also has four appearances by the LA Clippers.
According to this PDF from the Nielsen Corp., the Oklahoma City market is 41st nationwide, so ABC is rolling the dice a bit by stacking its schedule with the Thunder.
Making the second-most appearances on ABC are LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers and the large-market Chicago Bulls with five apiece. Cleveland is 19th in TV market size, while Chicago is third.
Teams from five of the top 10 TV markets – Philadelphia (4), Dallas (5), Boston (7), Washington (8) and Atlanta (9) – will not appear on ABC. Brooklyn, part of the New York market, also does not appear on ABC.
The chart shows the 10 teams appearing on ABC, number of appearances and market size.
| TEAM | GAMES | MARKET |
| Oklahoma City | 6 | 41 |
| Cleveland | 5 | 19 |
| Chicago | 5 | 3 |
| LA Clippers | 4 | 2 |
| San Antonio | 2 | 36 |
| Miami | 2 | 16 |
| LA Lakers | 2 | 2 |
| Houston | 2 | 10 |
| New York | 1 | 1 |
| Golden State | 1 | 6 |
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http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2014/04/2013-14-nba-tv-viewership-heat-top-draw-lakers-and-knicks-in-top-five/
Market size shouldn’t be the primary consideration as fans around the country watch good basketball and certain players are popular. People also watch to root for teams to lose (in some cases to help their favorite teams).
Slight improvement over last season when Lakers and Knicks dominated ABC games, but still went overboard (20 & 17) on TNT and ESPN games (they didn’t listen to Charles Barkley’s advice).
Ironically people like me actually watched some of those bad games, just to root for them to lose, in part because of all the excessive media attention they are given.
There should be way more games on ABC. Fortunately, I have League Pass and only Sixers and sometimes Wizards games are blocked out for me.
With the Love trade, CLE should be immensely popular this season. Spurs are finally getting some respect this season with televised games.
Still, its a disgrace with all the good teams or those with interesting players (eg Minny) are getting little National coverage.
11 teams have either 0, 1 or 2 games on TNT or ESPN, including Memphis, Charlotte, New Orleans and ATL (picked to be over 500). Why does TOR have only 4 games but Phoenix have 10 games? What if Brooklyn turns out to be better than the LeBron-less Miami, but Nets have only 4 games vs 16 games for the Heat? Its doubtful the Networks will be able to make large changes.
Do we have records of the original Network TV games vs the actual results?