Today’s sports calendar featured the Masters, some quality European soccer, and the final day of the NBA’s regular season.
That meant a ramshackle collection of meaningless games, teams trying (and failing, in the case of my Pacers) to maximize their tanking approach, and players getting into fights during huddles.
Oh my Rudy Gobert just threw a punch at his own teammate Kyle Anderson pic.twitter.com/6GP5wwkCqW
— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) April 9, 2023
One team with much more positive vibes heading into the playoffs: the Sacramento Kings, ending the longest postseason drought in American professional sports. They’ll play their first playoff games since 2006 starting next weekend as the 3-seed against the 6-seeded Golden State Warriors.
That matchup also means that the Kings have been given some prime billing on the broadcast calendar, receiving ABC’s primetime slot for Game 1 against Golden State.
This snaps a few more droughts, which are slightly less obvious. With a huge thanks to the invaluable Paulsen at Sports Media Watch, we know that the Kings are playing their first network television games since 2007.
Sacramento Kings now guaranteed their first ABC games since March 2007.
— Sports Media Watch (@paulsen_smw) April 9, 2023
Sacramento is also playing their first primetime network game since the very first ABC primetime game after Disney reentered the NBA rights picture back in 2002(!), which is just absurd.
Beyond everything else, Saturday's game will be the Kings' first primetime game on ABC since Christmas Day 2002 at the Lakers. That was ABC's first night of NBA coverage under the current TV deal.
— Sports Media Watch (@paulsen_smw) April 9, 2023
That’s absolute insanity. It’s actually wild that the league doesn’t mandate with their broadcast partners to get more markets more consistent primetime exposure across the national networks. Doing that could help ensure that when teams like the Kings DO pop up and become good, the casual NBA fan (and probably the casual sports media member) has at least some interest and familiarity.
The broadcast team for the above game was Al Michaels, Doc Rivers and Michele Tafoya.
— Sports Media Watch (@paulsen_smw) April 9, 2023
We certainly shouldn’t go 1.5 decades without a team making a network television appearance. The Kings worked around that by being, you know, really good this year. Even then, had they drawn a less sexy matchup than Golden State (arguably the most interesting series in the first round) they might have still been relegated to lesser slots and window.
One way around that, though: make a deep playoff run. The Kings and their fans would certainly love that outcome.
[h/t Sports Media Watch]
