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For all the noise about the NBA’s declining viewership, the recipe to attract fans to their TV screens seemed pretty clear Tuesday night: star power, a meaningful game, and some off-court drama.
The late-night game between the Lakers and Mavericks, the first game for Los Angeles star Luka Dončić against Dallas since it traded him to Los Angeles earlier this month, drew 2.5 million viewers on TNT, the network’s biggest audience since the NBA’s opening night.
The record continues a trend of strong viewership for Lakers games since Dončić’s debut on Feb. 10 against the Jazz, which drew 2.01 million viewers on ESPN. That contest was one of the league’s most-watched games exclusively on cable this year, despite it being a blowout and a late flex into national TV following the trade.
Dončić, LeBron James, and the Lakers also hosted the Nuggets on Saturday, drawing 2.87 million viewers on ABC, one of this season’s 10 most-watched games.
The trend bodes well for the April 9 rematch between the Lakers and Mavs, which will be the first time Dončić returns to Dallas. The five-time All-Star made it clear after Tuesday’s game that one meeting with Dallas has not yet cured him of the shock of the trade.
“The closure’s going to take a while, I think,” Dončić said. “I’m glad this game is over. There’s a lot of emotions, but we go little by little, and every day is better.”
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Dončić’s performance wasn’t the only story to watch Tuesday night. Much-maligned Mavericks GM Nico Harrison, who facilitated the controversial deal, was in attendance, and he received a chorus of “Thank you, Nico” chants from the Los Angeles fans.
Anthony Davis, the best player the Mavericks received in return for Dončić, was not in action due to an injury he sustained in his Dallas debut, but he was on the bench. Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban, who told FOS that he did not know about the trade until just before it was executed, was also there.
The different factors ostensibly trumped the presence of LeBron James—who at 40 years old, is still one of the NBA’s biggest draws—and his meeting with Kyrie Irving, whom he won a title with in 2016 and was Dončić’s running mate in the 2024 NBA Finals.
Organic Rivalry
The NBA has achieved a level of parity over the last half-decade, but it’s also dampened some rivalries built through Finals battles, like the one in the mid-to-late 2010s between the Cavaliers and Warriors. It doesn’t help that the NBA’s divisions matter very little to playoff seeding, unlike in the NFL, a key reason for building rivalries in football.
The league tried to fix this by launching Rivalry Week in 2022, though results have been mixed. The Warriors-Lakers game on Jan. 25 was one of the most-watched matchups of the year, but there was limited buzz outside of that game.
This Dončić trade may just be the spark the league needed to build a rivalry between the Lakers and Mavericks, especially as Dallas is expected to be a competitive team for the foreseeable future. The two teams could also meet in the playoffs this year with the Lakers battling for a top-three seed and the Mavericks a game out of sixth in the Western Conference.
