CLEVELAND – There was a great NBA game Wednesday night between two excellent teams that both bolster young lineups that also happen to play in small markets, and a lot of people watched.
Ratings for the Cleveland Cavaliers’ thrilling 129-122 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, televised nationally on ESPN, were up 20 percent from the network’s game in the same time slot last season and averaged 1.87 million viewers.
Additionally, the late game on ESPN from the same night, the Milwaukee Bucks’ 121-105 win over San Antonio, averaged 1.38 million viewers — up 88 percent from the game in the same time slot last year.
Why are TV ratings for a pair of mid-week games in January news? Because of who played in the games, where their teams are situated (not in New York or Los Angeles), and the ongoing discourse about the NBA’s declining TV ratings as an indicator that fans are losing interest in the sport.
Maybe they aren’t, after all. The Cavs are, as of now, one of the best regular-season teams ever at 32-4; the Thunder aren’t far behind them with 30 wins and have a bona fide MVP candidate in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Viewership for that game peaked at 2.5 million viewers.
According to the website Sports Media Watch, Cavs-Thunder was the sixth-highest-rated NBA game shown exclusively on cable this season and the fourth-most watched game that wasn’t on opening night, Christmas Day or the NBA Cup Finals.
“It was just pure basketball, pure competition,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. “Whoever won, lost, it was just a good game for the league.”
After fans were treated to a fierce, frenetic game that featured 30 lead changes, eight ties and was a one-possession game with less than two minutes left in Cleveland, they hung around to watch the Bucks, with one of basketball’s current best players in Giannis Antetokounmpo, against the likely next face of the sport in Spurs’ second-year sensation Victor Wembanyama.
According to Station Index, which tracks the size of TV markets, Cleveland (extending south to Akron) is the 17th largest TV market in the U.S.; Milwaukee is 35th; San Antonio is 37th; Oklahoma City is 34th.
The NBA’s biggest ratings drivers are the Lakers, where LeBron James just turned 40; the Warriors, where Steph Curry is 36; and the Boston Celtics – the winningest franchise in league history.
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Among the three midweek games this season to draw more than the Cavs-Thunder (according to Sports Media Watch) was a Celtics-Warriors game, former Golden State star Klay Thompson’s return to the Bay Area with Dallas and the first of two games so far between the Celtics and Cleveland.
As James and Curry near retirement (the Lakers-Warriors game on Christmas was the most-watched NBA regular-season game in five years, with an average viewership of 7.91 million on ABC), the league would do well for a new generation of stars and teams to catch on with the general public.
The Cavs’ four top players — Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen — are all under 30 and signed to long-term contracts in Cleveland. The Thunder held the league’s youngest roster on opening night, and are both deep and loaded with draft capital (picks). Gilgeous-Alexander, 26, said afterward he could not imagine playing anywhere outside of OKC. All of which means these two teams are in line to be good for years.
“There’s a lot of great players and I think a lot of great teams in the league, there’s a lot of great young players in the league,” said Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, who is 39. “I think the league’s very well situated moving forward, not only because of these two teams (Thunder and Cavs), but a lot of teams, a lot of players — I think it’s a very, very healthy product right now. And these two teams I think are part of that.”
Last month in Las Vegas, ahead of the NBA Cup Finals, commissioner Adam Silver admitted the league’s TV ratings were down, but also said the same was true for most other major sports (excluding the NFL) and also said the ratings dip did not mean interest in his league was waning.
Through the NBA Cup semifinals viewership of NBA games for the league’s national partners — ESPN, ABC and TNT — was down 19 percent over the same period last year, but the sport had a nice boost in viewership on Christmas, spearheaded by the Lakers-Warriors game.
The Cavs and Thunder have a rematch next week, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern in Oklahoma City, to be broadcast on TNT.
Asked after a narrow loss to Cleveland if his team’s success overall, and the buzz generated by the first game between Cleveland and Oklahoma City meant the national networks would “place more cameras” around the Thunder, Gilgeous-Alexander said “sure, why not? Won’t hurt.”
He appears to be right.
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(Photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
