‘It was our guess that they are a team that’s going to be very popular.’ – NBC Sports spokesman Ed Markey
NBC is betting the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal will replace Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen in the hearts of basketball fans.
During the much-delayed season which begins tonight, NBC will broadcast more Lakers’ games than any other team in the league.
In years past, NBC packed its TV schedule with Jordan and the Bulls, the most popular team in the NBA.
Now that Jordan is retired, “we had to build the schedule around teams that had a couple of things going for them: a solid core of good returning players and a legitimate shot at the championship,” said NBC Sports spokesman Ed Markey.
No one will replace Jordan immediately, but the kind of national exposure a team and its stars get on network TV can go a long way to creating a new, popular face for the NBA.
“With the Lakers, if you add all of that plus the fact that they have Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant – a couple of very well known players – it was our best guess that the [Lakers] are a team that’s going to be very popular,” Markey said.
“When the schedule was put together there were a number of teams we knew had a strong group of returning players, like New York, Indiana, Los Angeles, Utah and Seattle,”
Those teams, Markey said, make up the foundation of NBC’s NBA schedule.
The season kicks off tonight on TNT when the Knicks square off against the Orlando Magic.
NBC’s coverage starts Sunday, with regional coverage here of the Knicks versus Miami.
There will be 103 games in all, and of the 44 games that will air on NBC, the Lakers will appear 11 times, the Knicks get nine network shows, as will the Utah Jazz, the Seattle Sonics and the Indiana Pacers.
The Bulls’ only scheduled network game is against New York.
All 42 games are not available everywhere. For days where there are multiple games, NBC will air contests it thinks will be of appropriate regional interest.
But if a national favorite suddenly arises from the shortened season, the network is ready to juggle its schedule,
“We’re not going to make the audience’s mind up for them,” Markey said. “We’ll see how the ratings are and they’ll tell us who the next big team is,” Markey said.
“It’s going to come down to which team comes together and builds a style that captivates the international basketball audience, not just the local crowd,” said Bill Walton, the former NBA hall of famer who has covered the sport for NBC since 1992.
“I see this season as being wide open. There’s a real sense of hope with teams that think that they can put it together, whereas in the past they were just hoping not get too embarrassed by Michael Jordan,” he said yesterday during a press conference to promote the network’s basketball analysts.
Former Orlando Magic coach-turned-sports analyst Matt Goukas said, “With the demise of the Chicago Bulls, we’re heading into a new season where there are probably seven or eight teams that think they’ve got a legitimate chance at the championship. ”