Accusations of Network Bias
During its twelve-year run of covering the NBA, NBC Sports televised a substantial number of games featuring the Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers. In the prime-time slot, from 5:30 p.m EST to 8:00 p.m EST, NBC aired games almost exclusively featuring New York, Chicago or Los Angeles (incidentally, those three cities are the top three television markets in the United States, and have been historically the three most populous cities). Several fans and media analysts viewed this as favoritism, and fans of teams like the Houston Rockets who, despite being a large market (and Houston being the USA's fourth most populous city), being the dominant team in the early-to-mid-1990s, winning the title in 1994 and 1995, and featuring a superstar in Hakeem Olajuwon, were not featured on NBC at the level of the other three teams, felt as if they were being snubbed.
The perceived bias could be explained by the fact that, from 1990 to 2002 (NBC's run of covering the NBA), the Bulls, Lakers and Knicks played in six, four and two NBA Finals respectively, every Finals featuring one or more of those teams except 1995, when the Rockets swept the Orlando Magic to win their second consecutive NBA championship. Until 1998, the Chicago Bulls were a dominant team, and during the early to mid-1990s, the New York Knicks were also in the NBA's elite. From 1997 to 2002, the Los Angeles Lakers also joined the ranks of the best in the NBA. The teams' dominance, combined with the fact that they played in major media markets, led to their being featured more often than other teams.
Read more about this topic: National Basketball Association Controversies
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