It remains to be seen if LeBron James alone is enough for the Lakers to stay competitive on the court, but he might be all they need to stay afloat in the ratings.
Last weekend’s Lakers-Mavericks NBA “Sunday Night Basketball” game — the first Laker game after the apparent season-ending injuries to Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves — averaged a combined 3.7 million viewers on the NBC family of networks, per Nielsen (1.5, 3.02M) and Adobe Analytics, marking the largest NBA audience since an Olympic-adjacent Celtics-Lakers game on “Sunday Night Basketball” in February (5.6M).
Viewership no doubt benefited from both the Easter Sunday holiday and a lack of substantial sports competition. For the second-straight week, the new “Sunday Night Basketball” package allowed the NBA to take advantage of a Sunday night window uncontested by NCAA March Madness. The four “Sunday Night Basketball” games over Elite Eight and Final Four weekend rank as the league’s four most-watched windows during March Madness in a decade.
That includes this past weekend’s Rockets-Warriors nightcap — Warriors G Stephen Curry’s return to the lineup after a long absence — which drew 3.1 million across Nielsen (1.3, 2.44M) and Adobe.
The Warriors’ drawing power took a serious hit during Curry’s absence, which coincided with several of the team’s highest-profile national TV games. But the Lakers figure to hold up better so long as James remains in the lineup.
Viewership is not yet available for Thursday’s Lakers-Warriors game on Prime Video, which saw James lead the Lakers to their first post-injury win over the Curry-less Warriors. (James and Curry ended up not facing each other once during the 2025-26 season.)
That game took place exactly one week after the Lakers-Thunder matchup that derailed Los Angeles’ season, which also aired on Prime Video. Oklahoma City’s blowout win, in which both Doncic and Reaves were injured, averaged a 0.8 and 1.55 million on Prime Video — the streamer’s top NBA audience of the season outside of the NBA Cup and Black Friday, but down sharply from a more competitive pairing of the Warriors and Lakers on TNT last year (2.5M).
In other recent NBA action, Prime Video drew 960,000 viewers for last Saturday’s Spurs-Nuggets matinee — the most-watched of its Saturday afternoon windows this season. The Saturday afternoon games (a rarity for the NBA on national TV) coincide with primetime in Europe, where Prime Video also has NBA rights. As one might expect, four of the five most-watched NBA games on Prime in France have featured the Spurs and French star Victor Wembanyama.
Shifting to the workweek, NBC wrapped up its “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday” slate with 2.9 million (2.1M per Nielsen, plus Adobe Analytics) for coverage featuring Hornets-Celtics in most markets and Rockets-Suns on the West Coast. On the comparable week last year, TNT drew 1.5 million for Celtics-Knicks and 1.1 million for Warriors-Suns.
On Wednesday, ESPN drew 1.23 million for Blazers-Spurs sans-Wembanyama — up from Nuggets-Kings last year (1.21M). Hawks-Cavaliers led in with 1.20 million, down sharply from Lakers-Mavericks last year, which marked Luka Doncic’s first return to Dallas as a member of the Lakers.
This past Sunday was to mark Doncic’s third return to Dallas, but that was not to be.
