A matchup of the NBA’s two best teams so far this season delivered a healthy audience for ESPN.
Wednesday’s Thunder-Cavaliers NBA regular season game, a matchup pitting the teams with the two best records in the league, averaged 1.87 million viewers on ESPN — up 20% from Pelicans-Warriors on ABC last year and the second-largest NBA audience on the ESPN cable networks this season. (Warriors-Celtics drew 2.14 million in November.)
Cleveland’s win, which peaked with 2.5 million, ranks 13th for the season overall and sixth among cable-exclusive games.
Excluding major event games — Christmas Day, Opening Night and NBA Cup games in Las Vegas — only three games this season have had more viewers: the aforementioned Warriors-Celtics game, Klay Thompson’s first return to Golden State (2.14M) and the Cavaliers-Celtics game in which Boston ended Cleveland’s season-opening 15 game winning streak (1.94M).
The last time the Thunder and Cavaliers met on national television was during the 2017-18 season, when LeBron James was still playing for Cleveland. A February 2018 matchup drew 2.75 million on TNT and a January meeting on ABC had 2.79 million. (The last time the franchises met without James on the Cleveland roster was a 1996 meeting between the Seattle SuperSonics and Cavaliers on TNT, according to a 506 Sports archive.)
The Bucks-Spurs nightcap averaged 1.38 million, up 88% from Nuggets-Jazz last year, which overlapped with Pelicans-Warriors on ABC.
