{"id":733112,"date":"2026-05-13T08:24:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/733112\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T08:24:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:24:23","slug":"the-wemby-effect-spurs-emerging-as-top-draw-in-second-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/733112\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wemby effect? Spurs emerging as top draw in second round"},"content":{"rendered":"

The San Antonio Spurs were a ratings drag during the days of Tim Duncan, but the Victor Wembanyama era promises to be the opposite.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s Spurs-Timberwolves second round NBA playoff Game 4 averaged a combined 7.9 million viewers across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, trailing only Sixers-Celtics Game 7 on NBC following the Kentucky Derby (10.99M) as the most-watched game of the ongoing NBA Playoffs.<\/p>\n

The last non-clinching early round game to average as large an audience was Warriors-Lakers Game 3 on ABC in 2023, a matchup pitting LeBron James and Stephen Curry (8.37M). (Note that Nielsen methodological changes \u2014 specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new methodology that combines its traditional panel with \u201cBig Data\u201d from smart TVs and set-top boxes \u2014 will generally skew comparisons to past years.)<\/p>\n

Minnesota\u2019s win, which peaked with 10.2 million, nearly doubled last year\u2019s comparable Cavaliers-Pacers Game 4 on TNT Sports \u2014 a lopsided contest that averaged a Nielsen-only 4.04 million. (NBC\u2019s position is that because Nielsen does not track its streaming viewership, its combined Nielsen + Adobe audience figures are comparable to the Nielsen-only figures of other networks.)<\/p>\n

Game 3 of the series Friday night averaged 5.25 million on Prime Video, marking the streamer\u2019s largest NBA audience thus far (as of Friday). Viewership increased 24% from Thunder-Nuggets on ESPN last year (4.24M), and also notably surpassed Lakers-Thunder on Prime Video the previous night (5.08M).<\/p>\n

Game 2, as previously noted<\/a>, delivered 5.2 million on ESPN last Wednesday \u2014 the most-watched game of the playoffs on the cable network. (Note that ESPN had aired only two second round games through Tuesday.)<\/p>\n

While some of the credit may belong to Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves \u2014 who have played in highly-viewed games in each of their past two playoff runs \u2014 the Spurs account for several high water marks this season. Prior to the playoffs, the most-watched game of the season was Spurs-Thunder on ABC\/ESPN Christmas Day and the most-watched outside of broadcast television was the Knicks-Spurs NBA Cup Final on Prime.<\/p>\n

In other playoff action, NBC averaged a combined 4.9 million for Pistons-Cavaliers on Saturday afternoon \u2014 down 8% from Celtics-Knicks on ABC last year (5.34M).<\/p>\n

Prime Video drew 4.16 million for Knicks-Sixers leading into Spurs-Timberwolves Friday night, up 6% from Cavaliers-Pacers on ESPN last year (3.91M). Its full Friday night doubleheader averaged 4.72 million, up 16% from the same night on ESPN last year, with more pronounced gains among adults 18-34 (+65%), 18-49 (+47%) and 25-54 (+39%).<\/p>\n

The previous night, the streamer averaged 5.08 million for Lakers-Thunder Game 2 \u2014 up 2% from Warriors-Timberwolves on TNT Sports a year ago (4.96M), well within the margin that would be explained by Nielsen methodological changes. Cavaliers-Pistons led in with 3.84 million; there was no comparable window last year.<\/p>\n

Figures for ABC\u2019s two weekend windows \u2014 Thunder-Lakers Game 3 on Saturday night and Knicks-Sixers Game 4 on Sunday afternoon \u2014 were not immediately available.<\/p>\n

Going back to early last week, NBC averaged a combined 6.8 million for Thunder-Lakers Game 1 last Tuesday and 6.3 million for Sixers-Knicks Game 1 the night before \u2014 up a third and 28% respectively from last year\u2019s equivalent games (Warriors-Timberwolves: 5.1M; Knicks-Celtics: 4.9M). Both nights, NBCU carried a second game that aired on Peacock and was not Nielsen-rated (Timberwolves-Spurs on Monday, Cavaliers-Pistons on Tuesday).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Antonio Spurs were a ratings drag during the days of Tim Duncan, but the Victor Wembanyama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,2520,2525,2526,1007,697,2530,353,2533,60107,68053,2535,2536],"class_list":["post-733112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-cavaliers-tv-ratings","tag-knicks-tv-ratings","tag-lakers-tv-ratings","tag-nba-on-espn","tag-nba-on-nbc","tag-nba-playoff-ratings","tag-nba-ratings","tag-pistons-tv-ratings","tag-sixers-tv-ratings","tag-spurs-tv-ratings","tag-thunder-tv-ratings","tag-timberwolves-tv-ratings"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116566311773030366","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}