A pair of January games between two of the NBA’s top teams will now be viewable for the league’s fans throughout the country.
Heading into Friday’s games, the Cleveland Cavaliers have the best record in the Eastern Conference (and NBA, overall) at 21-4 while the 19-5 Oklahoma City Thunder have the best record in the Western Conference. Their two regular season meetings are to be played just over one week apart, with the Cavs hosting the Thunder on Wednesday, Jan. 8 and the game in Oklahoma City being played on Thursday, Jan. 16. Until Friday, those games were scheduled to be strictly local broadcasts.
That changed on Friday. Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic reported that the Jan. 8 game will now be on ESPN (bumping the Toronto Raptors at New York Knicks) while the Jan. 16 game will be on TNT (bumping the Phoenix Suns at Washington Wizards).
The NBA is putting two Cavaliers-Thunder games on national TV. The Jan. 8 game will now be on ESPN and the Jan. 16 is now going to air on TNT.
Knicks-Raptors on Jan. 8 is booted off ESPN and Suns-Wizards on Jan. 16 is off TNT.
— Mike Vorkunov (@MikeVorkunov) December 13, 2024
The Phoenix at Washington getting bumped isn’t much of a surprise. While the Suns do have plenty of star power (despite a season that’s been a mixed bag to this point), the 3-19 Wizards are the NBA’s worst team and hardly a huge national draw.
As far as the Jan. 8 game, even during Toronto’s championship-contending peak in the late 2010s, the lack of national (in the United States) broadcasts was a sore spot for team president Masai Ujiri. That said, bumping this game is far more notable since it involves the Knicks at Madison Square Garden — something ESPN has leaned heavily into in the recent past.
Bumping the Knicks for a game that doesn’t involve a big market team or an established ratings draw like LeBron James or Steph Curry shows how good the Cavs and Thunder have been this year.
[Mike Vorkunov on X]
