The NBA scored some big viewership gains in a trade deadline week that was the talk of the sports world.
Thursday’s Warriors-Lakers and Mavericks-Celtics NBA regular season games averaged 1.84 million and 1.81 million viewers respectively across TNT and truTV, marking the two most-watched games on TNT Sports since November (Cavaliers-Celtics: 1.94M) and the most-watched NBA games on cable overall since Thunder-Cavaliers on ESPN last month (1.87M).
Both games increased 41% from last year’s comparable windows, Mavericks-Knicks (1.29M) and Nuggets-Lakers (1.31M). The Lakers’ win also outdrew their matchup against the Warriors on TNT last February, with the caveat that the year-ago matchup did not include LeBron James (1.76M).
The games were the two most-watched on trade deadline day since 2020, no surprise given each featured a team involved in the biggest trade of recent times — the Mavericks’ swap of Luka Doncic for the Lakers’ Anthony Davis. (Neither Doncic nor Davis have yet to debut with their new team.)
Given the high-profile nature of the games — an NBA Finals rematch followed by the latest chapter of the LeBron James-Stephen Curry rivalry — it is likely viewership would have been elevated even without the trade deadline drama.
On Tuesday night, Celtics-Cavaliers and Lakers-Clippers both averaged 1.5 million across TNT and truTV, up 81 and 60 percent respectively from last year’s lower-profile doubleheader of Mavericks-Nets (830K) and Suns-Bucks (940K).
Sandwiched between, ESPN averaged 1.19 million for Spurs-Hawks and 1.17 million for Suns-Thunder on Wednesday night — up 2 and 4 percent respectively from Warriors-Sixers (1.16M) and Pelicans-Clippers (1.12M) a year ago.
