The NBA finished on a high note on cable last week, with big numbers for the final two games of the Cavaliers/Pistons series. Game 5 drew 5.7 million viewers on Thursday night, good for a 4.0/7 national rating. Game 6 drew the largest numbers so far of the postseason, as 7.4 million viewers watched TNT to see LeBron James and the Cavaliers advance to the NBA Finals.
To put that number in perspective, the most viewed non-Finals playoff game last year drew 8.8 million viewers (Cavaliers/Pistons Game 7 on ABC).
Game 4 of the series drew 4.7 million viewers on Tuesday night, while the final two games of the Spurs/Jazz series drew 4.6 and 4.0 million viewers, respectively.
In other sports news, Yankees/Red Sox finished with 5.3 million viewers on Sunday night, the third-most watched sporting event on cable behind Games 5 and 6 of Cleveland/Detroit. The game was the fifth-most watched regular season baseball telecast ever on ESPN, and actually “surpassed an April matchup between the teams that averaged 3,952,000 homes. It was the most-watched regular-season game on ESPN since former MLBer Mark McGwire hit his 61st home run in ?98.”
