On Thursday night, the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Lakers played the most exciting first half of basketball of the NBA season thus far. Unfortunately, Portland fans weren't allowed to watch it thanks to its national broadcast on TNT. On Friday, TNT issued a statement regarding its decision to not broadcast the first half of action.
The Lakers and Blazers started their game in the Rose Garden at 7:50 pm PT after TNT's broadcast of the Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks game went long. The game eventually went into triple overtime, with TNT deciding to stick with the game through its entirety across the nation, leaving Portland fans with no ability (at least legally) to watch their team.
Mike Tokito of The Oregonian cleared up the problem earlier today:
Why not switch games? A Turner spokesman sent The Oregonian a quote from Christina Miller, senior vice president of strategy, marketing and programming for Turner Sports.
“The Hawks-Heat triple-overtime game was an exciting national telecast,” Miller said. “This was not a regional telecast and we would not leave our first game until its conclusion.”
While "exciting" may not be the best way to describe a game that featured a Miami team with both LeBron James and Dywane Wade out with injuries and with an Atlanta crowd that seemed just as disinterested in the game as Portland fans were, TNT chose to stick with the telecast.
In addition, TNT refused to switch to the Portland-Los Angeles game on its other channels because they had commitments that they could not break.
When ESPN broadcasts Blazers games on one of its networks, it usually allows a local broadcast to run concurrently...
Turner Sports, however, does not extend the same local courtesy for its Thursday TNT broadcasts, so TNT had the only broadcast of the last night's game available on Portland TV.
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