Jalen doing Jordan numbers

Makes sense. I knew people who don’t know a single thing about basketball that were watching the finals. It wasn’t like this for previous years

Biggest market in the country looking to break a half century long drought versus an up and coming international star. That helps ratings.

I wonder how much money the nba has missed out on bc the Knicks have mostly been god-awful the last 30 years lmao

Fun series with a great winner. Gotta love the NBA as a neutral.

As someone who grew up in Chicago during the ‘90s even I admit that NBA Finals was purely badass.

There is simply no better story line in sports than a city ending a sports drought. Add in that it’s NYC and you have the perfect recipe for this. Honestly surprised it didn’t surpass 98

Peak of 33 mill is insane i thought game 3 wouldn’t be beat

Silver wanted this series to go 7 so badly

Very cool! I, for one, believe we should do this more often.

Would be surprised if the biggest market in the league didn’t do that. Plus they had Wemby playing which boosted viewings.

The whole city of New York was watching one way or another. Either at a watch party, bar or home. 

Imagine the number of people tuning in for a Knicks / Lakers final 🤯

What ? You need to tell me no one wanted to watch OKC vs Indiana play “real basketball” ? But Zach Lowe and The Starters told me that last year was what real basketball fans wanted to see.. lmao

NGL but back then everyone had cable, so there was more of a monoculture but doing this in the fragmented streaming era is crazy work

Knicks for clicks

I’m a Spurs fan but it’s dope to see how vast the NY market really is. I’d never seen so many bandwagon NBA fans in a longtime. Good for the league for sure.

Wemby is also definitely a big factor. The WCF also did big numbers despite being between two relatively smaller markets. I’d be willing to bet more people watched the WCF than the ECF

Damn this would have gotten 30+ million if it went to game 7 wouldn’t it

Also crazy when you factor in how many people watched watch parties, there were thousands of people watching on like a few projectors. Wonder how they account for that

That was the most fun I’ve had watching the playoffs in a very long time.

The most notable times were 90s Bulls and Rockets, 00s Lakers and Spurs, Heatles, Cavs championship, first Warriors championship, and the past decade has been a bit stale for me.

This Knicks run though was special.

Can’t even think about the shared screens and what social media accounting to how many people know about the finals

No surprise. My wife hates sports and even she got invested in the finals. She got as excited as I was.

What’s truly insane is that there were even MORE people watching than what the numbers say. Do you know how many people were watching the finals through the windows of sport bars and cafes in the city? There were full WATCH PARTIES taking the city over. I myself saw the same game in like 3 or 4 different locations.

Good series, was hoping for a Spurs win (sorry i loathe the Knicks and Heat) but kind of happy for a bunch of guys on the Knicks for finally winning a championship, mainly OG and Brunson.

I’m glad the numbers back up what felt like the most fun NBA finals matchup in a while

Absolutely one of the best series as of recent

Yeah, getting the most populated market in the country on and orange and blue juice sugar high will do that. Knicks bring clicks, always have always will.

If they and Lakers played in the Finals again, it’d break every record.

No social media, no internet streaming…you had radio and television. 90’s basketball was it folks

congrats to the Knicks

A lot of fools wanted OKC vs Cleveland, NBA would have gone bankrupt if that happened

People wanna see if Spurs would blow a lead - again.

Seeing the discourse around it I believe it because this series really brought out the casuals.

“How are the spurs going to choke this time?”

Made for great TV.

Adam Silver is going to have some words for De’Aaron Fox, as he lost out on mountains of revenue from a game 6 and game 7.

He can’t very well admonish Jalen Brunson for winning. 

I feel its much larger than what we see because of all the massive watch parties across New York. It truly captivated the whole city, especially game 5

My sisters and cousin who dont even watch basketball were fully invested, like this series was gripping everyone.

Man I live in NY and I was away for a trip ; I was surprised then understanding then annoyed by how many people including those who can’t name a single thing , were watching every game

It was playing in every bar on 5th ave brooklyn during brooklyn pride parade ffs!!!

Well, sorry small markets but we’re headed back to the Stern days.

That’s absolute craziness. Jazz- Bulls I was just referring to but didn’t know it had the record. The Knick’s had me enthralled though.

I’m not even a huge Knicks fan, but the team has grew on me because they always make amazing comebacks in so many games like last year’s playoffs. Had a chance to see them take on the Warriors in March when I was visiting NYC to see a friend, I thought that was going to be a blow out game for the Knicks, but the Knicks made it entertaining all the way through to the end. That was also my first time as MSG and I was very impressed with how easy it was to get out of there compared to other venues.

Those viewership numbers in 98 were just insane

I wonder when will we see a title like this when where there’ll be no “since”

As an Aussie who rarely watches basketball I was absolutely hooked this whole series. Everyone even over here was talking about it. The Knicks are truly massive

And this probably doesnt count the thousands of people watching the games on a wall in nyc that someone is projecting out their window.

So game 5 basically matched the MLB’s game 7 ratings. The series averaged 5 million more viewers per game. Imagine if this series went 7.

R/baseball saying it’s overtaken the NBA when in reality they had LA and Ohtani, who is the biggest baseball star in the last 30+ years in the finals, and it went 7 games. Funny how Texas and Arizona didn’t do massive ratings. Hmmm

Most definitely a combo of how interesting the Knicks were in the postseason, how they were playing for relevance after being trash for so many years, and that the four games before were all instant classics

My captain 🫡

Imagine if the series had gone to 7. Damn.

Glad america got exposed to some really good dudes. Jalen is worthy of being a role model. Tremendous human.

Lakers v Knicks Next years finals

I’m not saying the finals weren’t good, but this is because they changed how they count viewers.

No mention of who the Bulls played, interesting.