Tuesday night's Bulls/Heat game, in which the Bulls were shellacked and Derrick Rose's return was about as anti-climactic as possible, gave TNT some bragging rights:

Turner Sports’ exclusive NBA on TNT Opening Night 2013 Presented by AutoTrader.com featuring the Miami Heat and LeBron James against the Chicago Bulls and Derrick Rose – Tuesday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. ET – averaged a 3.3 U.S. HH rating and 5.4 million total viewers to become the second highest-rated and most-viewed opening night game in network history.  Last night’s opening night telecast was the highest-rated and most-viewed game on the network since 2010 when James and Chris Bosh debuted with the Heat.  Turner Sports, in its 30th consecutive year of NBA coverage, has televised the league’s opening night doubleheader 12 straight seasons. 

While those ratings are all well and good, the World Series has been generating numbers at least twice as high. Then again, it is the World Series and not another LeBron James ring ceremony.

Locally, the ratings were much better: 17.1 in Miami and 11.5 in Chicago. It's surprising the ratings in Chicago weren't higher given that the city has been torturing itself trying to come up with algebreic formulas for the better part of a year to figure out when Derrick Rose was actually coming back. The start of the NBA season has been flying under the radar, but if these numbers are an indication, it should be a pretty good year for the league on television.

[Turner Sports]

About Reva Friedel

Reva is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and the AP Party. She lives in Orange County and roots for zero California teams.

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