It was a long weekend for college basketball fans watching games on ESPN thanks to the trade heard round the world that sent Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers.
It all started on Saturday, when ESPN moved their schedule around for what they thought would be Luka’s first game with LeBron James and the Lakers on Saturday against the Indiana Pacers. Unfortunately, Dončić wasn’t quite ready to return from his calf injury. To add insult to injury (quite literally), LeBron also sat out the newly nationally televised game, making it a nightmare scenario for ESPN. At least Austin Reaves went off in a Lakers victory.
Unfortunately, the Saturday Lakers game was awkwardly shoehorned into ESPN’s slate of college basketball games. And the network was forced to shift the beginning of Dick Vitale’s triumphant return to the broadcast booth at the Duke-Clemson game.
The worldwide leader tried again on Monday night by adding the Lakers’ next game against the Utah Jazz. Thankfully, Luka Dončić and LeBron James both played so we could finally witness their long-awaited debut together. But once again it came at the expense of the network’s traditional college basketball slate.
At the under-12 second half media timeout, Kevin Connors and Seth Greenberg interrupted the Baylor-Houston broadcast to send it to Los Angeles at around 10:40 p.m. ET right before tip-off. The Baylor-Houston game was then shifted to ESPNU.
ESPN cut away from Baylor-Houston with 11 minutes left in the game to go to Luka Doncic’s Lakers debut, shifting college basketball to ESPNU. pic.twitter.com/IkvyL93q7L
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 11, 2025
Needless to say, college basketball fans were not happy with what they perceived to be as second class treatment from ESPN.
ESPN just kicked an active college basketball game off ESPN to watch LA traffic pic.twitter.com/FMk48qCPbQ
— Cole Adams (@coleadamss) February 11, 2025
ESPN only blocked off an hour and a half for a college basketball game so now we’ve got 10 minutes until Lakers coverage is supposed to start and Houston Baylor isn’t even at the under 16 timeout. Genuinely impressive how bad that network is at scheduling basketball.
— WBR (@W_B_Rick) February 11, 2025
Why does ESPN bother airing college basketball, it clearly doesn’t care about it https://t.co/e5uZ8giyiV
— Brian Pedersen (@realBJP) February 11, 2025
But on the flip side, NBA fans who were excited to see Luka’s debut were appalled when they found a Big XII basketball game at 10:30 p.m. ET instead of the lead-up to the big debut. Even CNBC media reporter Alex Sherman chimed in.
Sure, I’d kinda like to see Luka’s debut with the Lakers, but what I REALLY want to watch is this Houston-Baylor college basketball game inexplicably on ESPN right now.
— Alex Sherman (@sherman4949) February 11, 2025
@espn is literally worse run network. TNT would be hyping the Lakers right now, not running a regional college basketball game.
— GenX_Nation (@GenX_nation) February 11, 2025
This has to be the most viewed college basketball game of the year because everyone is waiting for the Lakers game to start on ESPN lol
— The daily Fanatic (@goldscoobs) February 11, 2025
From what I can tell, the people turning ESPN on at 10:30 to see Luka’s Lakers debut are watching their first college basketball game of the year.
— Joe Wright (@Sctvman) February 11, 2025
ESPN was really caught in no man’s land here with their scheduling. It’s a real shame that it didn’t work out on Saturday and they had to take a mulligan on Monday and complicate their college basketball schedule once again.
There’s no questioning that Luka Dončić’s Lakers debut should have been nationally televised and Bristol made the right decision to cut away. If a Baylor-Houston regular season basketball game has to make way, then so be it.
One possible solution is that ESPN could have just put Baylor-Houston solely on ESPNU to begin with and do an NBA pregame show to avoid the awkward transition. Hopefully fans would have been a bit more understanding in that scenario as most of the criticism from both sides seem to have come from the fact that college basketball got dumped and the NBA got no pregame. By trying to please everyone by taking Baylor-Houston as far as it could go, ESPN actually ended up pleasing nobody.
Maybe it’ll go a bit more smoothly for ESPN for the next trade of the century.
About Matt Yoder