The NBA playoff schedule-makers “took notice” of the Thunder’s season, awarding the team “one of the marquee television slots to start the NBA playoffs,” according to Tim Reynolds of the AP. They will “begin Round 1 at home against either” the Grizzlies or Mavericks on Sunday at 1pm ET (noon locally in Oklahoma City) before a “full national audience” on ABC. A year ago, the Thunder claimed the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference playoffs for the second straight year, but they did not get an ABC game until the second round. They were on TNT, TruTV or NBA TV for the entirety of Round 1 and those viewership numbers “fell well short” of the ABC games. But this year, for the opening weekend of three ABC games, the Thunder -- who play in the league’s third-smallest TV market -- got one of their home games selected, as did the Lakers and defending champions Celtics. The Thunder “felt their market size held them back” going into this season, as the NBA and its broadcast partners selected the 10 teams for the Christmas Day games -- a lineup from which the team “got snubbed” this season. However, by season’s end, the Thunder “had obviously proven their case” (AP, 4/16).
LEAVING ESPN: SI’s Patrick Andres wrote that for 15 years, Cassidy Hubbarth “has been an ESPN stalwart,” becoming a “respected presence on the network’s NBA coverage” throughout the 2010s. Now, as basketball “enters a new media era,” Hubbarth is moving on. She is headed to Amazon to become “a face of the platform’s NBA coverage,” and yesterday’s play-in tournament game between the Heat and Bulls was her last on ESPN. As the game “wound to a close,” announcers Mike Breen, Doris Burke and Richard Jefferson “took turns praising Hubbarth.” Hubbarth, moved nearly to tears, thanked her colleagues before “modestly deflecting attention back to the game” (SI, 4/16).
