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Mavericks, Pelicans games are leaving their local sports networks…

26 August 2024
by admin

The NBA logo before the game between the Detroit Pistons and Charlotte Hornets at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit on March 11, 2024.

Nic Antaya | Getty Images

Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans fans are waiting for a new way to watch local games in the upcoming National Basketball Association season.

Both teams are exiting their regional sports networks owned by Diamond Sports, according to a Friday bankruptcy court filing.

The NBA season is set to begin Oct. 22. While neither franchise has publicly announced where its local games will be aired, both teams have a history of televising their games with local broadcasters.

The Pelicans have reached an agreement in principle with Gray Television to air games this season, a person close to the team told CNBC, confirming earlier media reports. Representatives for Gray and the Pelicans declined to comment on the matter.

Last season, the Pelicans aired 10 of their matchups on Gray’s local stations, and the Mavericks, who appeared in last season’s NBA Finals, entered a 13-game agreement with Tegna‘s Dallas-Fort Worth stations.

Representatives for the Mavericks and Tegna did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests asking who would broadcast their local games.

The Mavericks and Pelicans are the latest teams to move the bulk of their regular-season games from their Diamond-owned regional sports networks, which are under the Bally Sports brand.

Diamond Sports has spent the past 18 months trying to navigate its way out of bankruptcy, and along the way, several NBA, WNBA and National Hockey League teams have ditched regional sports networks in favor of local broadcasters. Some Major League Baseball teams that have left these networks will now have their games produced by the league.

Diamond Sports will receive $1.3 million and more than $297,000 in repayments from the Mavericks and Pelicans, respectively, as part of the terminations, according to the court filing.

The split with the Mavericks and Pelicans comes as Diamond enters into broadcast and streaming rights agreements with the NBA and NHL for the upcoming season as part of its bankruptcy process. The deals are subject to court approval.

“We are appreciative of the ongoing collaboration and long-term partnerships with the NBA and NHL,” Diamond Sports CEO David Preschlack said in a statement, adding the deals with the leagues “are another major milestone” toward exiting bankruptcy protection.

Diamond Sports has been one of many companies crushed by the decline of cable. Though it launched a sports-only streaming service for some of its teams in 2022, the company’s $8 billion debt load was too staggering to stop it from filing for bankruptcy protection.

As the NBA and NHL seasons near, Diamond has also faced more pressure in recent months to form a viable business plan and prove it can make the necessary rights payments.

Diamond marked another milestone this summer when it reached a deal to return its networks to Comcast’s cable TV customers. The Bally Sports networks went dark on Comcast — Diamond’s third largest distributor — in early May.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.

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Science & Environment

The Boston Celtics become the first team to hit…

12 January 2023
by admin

CNN
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The Boston Celtics became the first team in the NBA this season to reach 30 wins after beating the New Orleans Pelicans 125-114 at TD Garden in Boston on Wednesday night, largely behind a combined 72 points from the team’s stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

Brown scored season-high 41 points and had 12 rebounds while Tatum had 31 points and 10 rebounds as the Celtics won their fourth straight game.

Brown specifically attacked the Pelicans from the mid range, crediting extra muscle added in the offseason for allowing him to handle contact with bigger opponents, as he makes a concerted effort to not settle for attempts from deep.

“I think I can get to the rim at a good rate this year,” Brown told reporters afterwards, per the Celtics website. “I definitely want to keep that up.

“I don’t want to let the defense off the hook, but I feel good about a lot of the shots I took from three. Some of them went down, some of them haven’t. But I definitely still think I’m going to look to get to the basket a lot more for sure just for the remainder of the year.”

Celtics forward Al Horford reiterated the point: “When (Brown) drives, I feel like people feel it.

“When he’s hitting you when he’s driving, that’s real. So it’s good to see him play at that level and have his mind made up that he’s going to attack the paint.”

It was Brown’s sixth 40-point game of his career, moving him past Sam Jones and Isaiah Thomas for the sixth-most in Celtics history.

Together with Tatum, the two wing players have become the driving force behind Boston’s recent success.

The team reached the NBA Finals last season, eventually losing to the Golden State Warriors, and is again one of the best in the league this year.

In both scoring at least 30 points and 10 rebounds in the same game, Brown and Tatum became the first Celtics players to achieve that stat line since Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker in 2001.

Drafted a year after one another – Brown was drafted with the No. 3 pick in the 2016 draft and Tatum was selected with the No. 3 pick in 2017 – they have built up an understanding together about dissecting defenses.

“They continue to grow in front of our eyes,” Horford said of the star duo after the victory. “They feed off each other, and that’s what really drives our team.”

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Mavericks, Pelicans games are leaving their local sports networks…

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The Boston Celtics become the first team to hit…