The Golden State Warriors are the 2017-2018 National Basketball Assn. champions, blowing out the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight 108-85 at Quicken Loans Arena in what may be LeBron James’s last game for the Ohio team. The Warriors completed their second straight championship victory by inflicting the ninth sweep in NBA…

President Donald Trump said during a wide-ranging but impromptu back and forth with reporters today that he won’t invite the winner of the NBA championship series to the White House — no matter who prevails between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers. Speaking at media before departing for the G7 meeting…

UPDATED, 12:03 PM: There are a lot of stats and numbers-crunching that came of last night Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, but there are really only two that matter. First is the score, as the defending champion Golden State Warriors beat 2016 champs the Cleveland Cavaliers 124-114 in overtime to kick off the teams…

The NBA Playoffs are heating up, an auspicious sign for advertisers, movie studios and basketball stakeholders alike. The Eastern Conference Finals, which tilted toward Boston after the first two games, rode a decisive LeBron James-led comeback win by Cleveland on Saturday to tally the second-highest rating in ESPN’s…

ESPN saw its highest-rated 2018 NBA Playoffs telecast Friday when the Cleveland Cavaliers were defeated by the Indiana Pacers in Game 6. The telecast generated a 2.9 metered market rating, up 81% from the Boston Celtics-Chicago Bulls game in 2017, a 1.6, according to Nielsen. The game peaked with a 3.6 metered market…

UPDATE, 1:50 PM: The final scores on the court last night saw ex-champs the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Houston Rockets win the doubleheader games of the NBA season opener but now we have the other score, so to speak. Winning the night on cable for TNT, the Cavs’ victory over the Boston Celtics and the Rockets triumph…

The NBA regular season opened on TNT tonight, and LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates locked arms during the national anthem. No one on the visiting Boston Celtics appeared to take part as a retired Navy man belted out the song. James and some teammates had their heads bowed as the camera showed them…

  The season two debut of NBA Saturday Primetime on ABC, with the San Antonio Spurs' overtime win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, was the highest-rated, non-Christmas NBA game of the 2016-17 regular season across ABC and ESPN. Averaging a 2.6 metered market rating, viewership peaked with a 4.0 rating from 11-11:15 p.m…

UPDATED: Two of the top U.S. professional sports leagues, the NBA and the NFL, went head-to-head yesterday. With Christmas falling on a Sunday, the traditional five-game Christmas Day basketball lineup faced the two Sunday pro football matchups. The only NBA game not to go against NFL football, the Boston Celtics'…

UPDATE, 10:59 AM: The Cleveland Cavaliers claimed their very first NBA championship last night in what was a nail-bitting 93-89 of a Game 7 against the Golden State Warriors. But the real winner was ABC, which drew its biggest audience ever for an NBA game. With the LeBron James-led Cavs’ 100th playoff win, the…

Fans of the Golden State Warriors may be feeling intense frustration right now, but ABC is surely celebrating tonight after LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers handed the Warriors a solid 115-101 defeat, sending the 2016 NBA finals to game 7 for the first time since 2013, and only the fourth time since 2005. The 2016…

After a rare tripleheader on ABC-ESPN last Christmas Day, when two games migrated from ESPN to TNT, the Disney networks reverted to their regular slate of five basketball games, with rating up +9% from last year’s three-game average. The driver was the marquee match-up on ABC between Golden State Warriors and Cleveland…