The NBA released its full 2023-24 regular season schedule Thursday, energizing basketball fans for what is sure to be an intriguing regular season. While there is parity across the league and plenty of teams perceived as having legitimate championship aspirations, fans are noticing the incongruities among franchises in terms of how many times they are featured on national television.
On 97.1 The Ticket in Detroit, midday host Doug Karsch asked his co-host Gator Anderson how many times the Detroit Pistons were scheduled to appear on national television for the upcoming season. The answer? Just four games televised nationally for the 2023-24 campaign.
“There’s no respect,” Anderson stated. The only team with fewer national television games is the Toronto Raptors, who have just three.
The Los Angeles Lakers, a star-studded roster featuring veteran All-Star forwards LeBron James and Anthony Davis, qualified for the Western Conference Finals last year after finishing as the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference. While the team has a chance to contend, Karsch and Anderson were somewhat surprised to learn that they have 40 games on national television, 10 times more than the Pistons. Despite Los Angeles being second among Nielsen Media Research’s rankings of domestic market areas (DMAs) – along with the Lakers having a storied history with 17 NBA championship victories – it was evident that the Ticket duo were perturbed.
“Is that just because [it is the] West Coast [and] you’re going to get the late game on TNT and what are you going to choose from,” Anderson said. “You’re going to have a couple games a year where you can match the Lakers up against Golden State, which will have appeal.”
“They probably want to put the Lakers’ G-League team on more than the Pistons,” Karsch said, incredulous towards the dissimilitudes in the national games. “Forty.”
