With National Basketball Association fans now closely looking towards entering the month of March, the regular season is back with a bang and we are entering its final third, and United Kingdom audiences will be able to enjoy the on court antics just like United States viewers regularly do.
Basketball is a long favourite in the UK, and its exposure has been growing massively in recent years (as has their own domestic sport) and now that a deal has been agreed for the British Broadcasting Company to screen a handful of games over the coming weeks of the calendar, the hope is even more eyes will be drawn into the game, and it will gain some new supporters and with March Madness coming, there will be plenty of new nba odds on offer as well.
The first match to be screened by the BBC will be the clash between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that will air in the early hours of Saturday, February 24 on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
There will be plenty to learn for the new potential audience, given the fixture calendars of soccer and rugby, and 82 regular season games will probably surprise many of the new viewers – not least the make up that sees 20 of the NBA teams go into the playoffs from a total of 30.
As we know, with between 26 to 29 games left to play, there is still everything to play for as we move towards March Madness and there are plenty of things that remain up in the air when it comes to a season extension via the playoffs, but one side guaranteed to feature are the Boston Celtics who have taken victory in 41 of their 55 matches so far.
As defending champions, after the Denver Nuggets took the win over the Miami Heat in last year’s finals, they will still be hoping to fancy their chances, but all sides will be looking at the 40 or more regular season wins ceiling as a minimum.
Court fans will know, since the play in tournament was introduced back in the 2020/21 campaign, 40 wins has guaranteed a post-season involvement and there is little reason to believe that this will change this year.
The 76ers Joel Embiid will not be retaining his MVP crown following injury, and he also missed the recent All Star Game because of it, but he simply will not meet the criteria of 65 regular season matches to make the running order.
The Nuggets’ centre Nikola Jokic does stand a very good chance of reclaiming the crown having won in 2020/21 and 2021/22, as he has been the most efficient player this season in the NBA.
There are plenty of other variables though, and as the usual NBA audience watches on to see how things play out, we will have to see how the twists and turns are received by the UK market to see whether the sport can grow even further in the years that are still to come.