Latest news with #Finals'
Miami Herald
a day ago
- Sport
- Miami Herald
Social media has a plan to save the NBA Finals
Despite experiencing a brilliant playoff tournament featuring competitive matchups and star players, NBA fans feel like the Finals have been lackluster. All year, NBA fans are promised that the game intensifies once the playoffs come around. And this year, the teams did not disappoint. Related: Comcast spends big bucks to bring back an NBA legend While the Oklahoma City Thunder has been one of the best teams in the league all season, its championship opponent, the Indiana Pacers, is a true Cinderella team that no one expected to get this far in the tournament. However, while the postseason has been entertaining, fans on social media have not been quiet about how disappointing ESPN and ABC's broadcast of the NBA Finals has been. Viewers are letting their feelings show through the ratings. The TV audience for the 2025 NBA Finals has shrunk over the series' first two games. About 8.9 million people watched Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton beat Oklahoma City at the buzzer. That number fell to 8.76 million in the following, less competitive game 2. More concerning is the 24% year-over-year drop in viewership from the first two games. The Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks, who play in much bigger markets, average 11.65 million viewers during their championship series. The game 1 viewership is the smallest on record for the Finals' normal window (excluding the Covid bubble playoffs). Meanwhile, game 2 was seen by the league's smallest Finals audience since 2007. Image source: Pidgeon/Getty Images It was the end of an era when the NBA officially moved from NBC to ESPN. The NBA's Sunday broadcasts on NBC introduced the world to legends like Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, and Charles Barkley. But once the NBA moved to ESPN for the 2002-03 season, everything changed. Gone was the iconic Roundball Rock opening theme. By 2007, so too was the iconic broadcasting duo of Steve "Snapper" Jones and Bill Walton. While the ESPN NBA broadcasts have had their ups and downs over the years, NBA fans seem to have reached their breaking point with this year's Finals presentation. Related: Boston Celtics secure another title after championship run In 1986, the league started using on-court decals featuring script and a stylized NBA Finals logo for the championship round. In 2005, the league took it further and added a giant Larry O'Brien trophy to the mix. That has also since been abandoned, leading to a loss of pageantry that used to define the NBA Finals. Fans are not happy. "It's the NBA Finals and the NBA didn't even show the National Anthem, Pre-Game intros, no logo on court or jerseys. These are little things but they're so important for the experience," user @OhhMar24 said on X. More on networks and streaming: HBO Max debacle leads to shareholder revoltWalt Disney CEO sounds the alarm on streaming, ESPNComcast spends big bucks to bring back an NBA legend Another fan posted a video of the introduction ceremony from the 2007 finals, lamenting the loss of production value in this year's series. "For reasons unknown to anybody, The NBA successfully ruined the 'big game' feel of the Finals - removed finals logo at center court [and] got rid of airing the starting lineups on tv. The '07 Celtics finals starting lineup intros still gives me goosebumps," said X user @JM1849. The criticism got so bad on social media that the league finally decided to add two digital decals to the broadcast at the last minute. The results were shockingly bad. X user @MikeBeauvais added a bit of sarcasm, saying, "Here are the terribly low-res digital Larry O'Brien Trophies superimposed on the court like you wanted. They're glitchy and disappear if we cut back to them too quickly." Along with Warner Bros. Discovery, ESPN has been the NBA's most significant national broadcasting partner for over two decades. While the relationship will remain strong as the new, 11-year $76 million media rights deal between the two takes effect next season, the pair is no longer in an exclusive relationship. The NBA Finals have been broadcast exclusively by ESPN and ABC since the 2002-03 season. However, next year, NBC's new contract with the NBA also starts, and ABC/ESPN Finals exclusivity ends. Next season, the NBA Finals will be broadcast on a channel not owned by ABC for the first time in nearly 25 years, and NBC is pulling out all the stops to ensure fans don't complain about their production like they do about the ESPN Finals. Last year, NBCUniversal announced a blockbuster 11-year deal for the NBA's broadcast rights. Comcast will pay the NBA about $2.5 billion annually for the right to broadcast games and create content around them. Michael Jordan, the first-ballot NBA Hall of Famer and universally recognized greatest player of all time, will join NBC Sports' coverage of the NBA as a special contributor when the new season kicks off in October. NBC also announced that it is bringing Roundball Rock back to the broadcasts, hopefully restoring some of the aura current fans claim the NBA is missing. Related: NBA's new tech aims to sharply boost league's fanbase The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Sport
- Time of India
'It looks like a god*amn AAU tournament'- Bomani Jones slams NBA over Finals' coverage
'It looks like a god*amn AAU tournament'- Bomani Jones slams NBA over Finals' coverage (Image Source: Getty) While the heated basketball Finals has started and fans have their eyes glued to the TV screens, checking scores of their favorite team and players, Bomani Jones, a popular sports TV commentator believes it hasn't been interesting enough. He said he has been frustrated with the NBA and its Finals broadcast this year. Bomani Jones criticizes NBA's Finals coverage Speaking on his The Right Time with Bomani Jones podcast, Jones felt the NBA hasn't made the Finals the special event it is, yet. He said, 'One of my chief criticisms of ESPN's coverage of the NBA is that they treat the NBA like the NFL. You can't cover it the same way. People don't want the breakdowns of strategic minutia in basketball the way that they want them in football, right? Basketball's a little more loosey-goosey,' 'It's a little bit more free. That's how people are more likely to want to talk about it. You can't do quick bullet-point discussions in the way that ESPN does. So when you come out here and you don't have any signage on the court to indicate that it's the NBA Finals, it already looks like a g*ddamn AAU tournament with the coaches wearing quarter-zips, and anybody wearing any old jersey that was clean.' What the NBA is getting WRONG with the Finals | Bomani Jones He added, 'You can't tell who the home team was just by looking on the floor. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Many elders are abandoned by their families, you can help! HelpAge India Donate Now Undo You gotta make this feel like something.' 'Sports are entertaining, not entertainment. Because the problem is if you treat sports like entertainment, then sports gets treated like the rest of entertainment right now, which is something that is not intended to be momentous, something that is not intended to be monumental, but simply something intended to occupy your time and attention, You don't want sports to be that, You don't want to be so cynical to strip away all the larger things and act like it doesn't matter,' Jones said, in his podcast. Also Read: 'Protecting Our Home Court'- Myles Turner Promises Fans That Indiana Pacers Will Bounce Back For NBA Finals Game 3 Now that a tough game between Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder is over during Game 2, it'll be interesting to see how Game 3 turns between the two teams, as they are not backing down.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
The 1985-86 Calgary Flames Squad That Prevented A Gretzky Five-Peat
The 1986 post-season will go down as another unforgettable run in Calgary Flames history. For starters, it was a whirlwind of a regular season for the Flames, who went 23-12-6 after overcoming a then-franchise record eleven-game losing streak from Dec. 14, 1985 to Jan. 7 1986. Their efforts resulted in a second-place finish in the Smythe Division, second only to provincial rivals, the titanic Oilers, led by Wayne Gretzky who scored 215 points that season, the MOST by any player in a regular season in NHL history (remember this). Gary Suter won the Calder Memorial Trophy as best rookie of the season. The Flames swept the Winnipeg in the first round and then beat the Presidents' Trophy-winning Edmonton with the Hart Memorial Trophy winner Gretzky (yes, that 200+ point scoring guy) in seven games. Rookie of the year Suter had a team-high five assists. His seven points were the second-highest in the series alongside teammates Hakan Loob, Joe Mullen and Oilers' Glenn Anderson, trailing only The Great One's 13 points. This was a big moment in league history as this team, that came second to Edmonton in the Smythe Division by a mammoth 30 points, took down the big and mighty Oilers, and stopped them from potentially pulling off a historical Stanley Cup five-peat for the greatest player in hockey. Edmonton had won the Stanley Cup the two years before (1984, 1985), and would go on to win in the two years after (1987, 1988). Sadly, this is the only flex Flames fans can have over Oilers fans as Calgary has never beaten Edmonton in any playoff series since. The Flames then beat St. Louis in seven games to win the franchise's first Clarence S. Campbell Bowl as conference champions and advance to the 1986 Stanley Cup Finals. Al MacInnis and Paul Reinhart led the series with 10 and eight points respectively. The Flames became the first team from Calgary to reach the Finals since the Calgary Tigers of the WCHL in 1924. Unfortunately, after winning their first game, Calgary got topped by the Prince of Wales Conference champions Montreal Canadiens in four consecutive games to lose the series 4-1. While the Flames did not claim Lord Stanley's Cup that season, they produced a memorable season that resonates with Flames fans, and be remembered for years as the squad that denied immortality status for Gretzky. The only team in NHL history that has won the Stanley Cup five years in a row are the 1956-60 Montreal Canadiens. Fortunately, Calgary would have to wait only three more years to finally reach the mountain top in 1989. Nine of the Flames' players from the 1986 Finals' squad would go on to lift the cup. These finals were also against the Canadiens that consisted a lot of the 1986 Finals' roster, so a bit of payback was rightfully due.
