As the first year of its new rights deal enters its final phase, the NBA is getting set to crown its eighth different champion in as many seasons by way of what amounts to a dream matchup between the Spurs and the Knicks. It does so on the heels of a seven-game Western Conference finals shootout that drew more viewers than last season’s championship series.NBC on Saturday closed out its return to the hardcourt with an average draw of 12.67 million viewers, per Nielsen Big Data + Panel estimates, with another 3.23 million fans streaming the action via Peacock. Led by the 22-year-old French phenom/alien life form Victor Wembanyama—who, for what it’s worth, has yet to realize his full potential—San Antonio eliminated the defending champs from Oklahoma City in front of the conference’s largest Game 7 audience since the Golden State Warriors beat the Thunder in 2016 (16 million viewers, TNT).The Spurs’ 111-103 victory peaked at a staggering 22.2 million viewers as time ran out at the Paycom Center. All told, the full series averaged 8.57 million viewers on the NBC broadcast flagship and 10.8 million when the streaming impressions are thrown into the soup. That strong showing edged ABC’s deliveries for the 2025 NBA Finals, a seven-game Pacers-Thunder set that averaged 10.24 million viewers per night.By way of comparison to last year’s WCF (Minnesota-OKC, 5.39 million viewers), the 2026 installment averaged nearly twice as many viewers. Four of the five Timberwolves-Spurs games were carried on Disney’s biggest cable outlet, ESPN, while the remaining outing aired on ABC. Of course, the cable vs. broadcast dynamic makes for an apples-to-Apple Jacks® comparison; at the time, ESPN’s signal was picked up by some 61 million pay-TV households, whereas NBC’s affiliate network reaches approximately 85 million TV homes.Squaring off with the Spurs Wednesday night in Game 1 of the Finals is a Knicks squad looking to claim New York’s first NBA title since 1973. Powered by the exploits of Jalen Brunson (25.5 ppg), the Knicks march into Frost Bank Center on a historic 11-game tear, one in which they recorded sweeps of the 76ers and the Cavaliers while churning out a record 262-point differential.The Knicks come in as underdogs (+160 to San Antonio’s -190), but the prospect of at least two games staged at the Mecca and the full-throated support of the country’s largest media market—with 7.84 million TV households, the New York DMA accounts for 6.1% of the national base—has ABC clicking its heels in anticipation. Scatter rates for ad time reserved beyond the guaranteed quartet of broadcasts is nosebleed-inducing, so much so that Disney’s sales team could motor past last year’s Finals haul ($288 million, per EDO’s Ad Engage platform) with a five-game set.Duration is probably the only thing that ABC and the NBA need worry about, although there’s nothing in New York’s springtime rampage that suggests the Knicks will function as a mere speed bump on Wemby’s path to superstardom. Given a sufficient number of nights in which to unspool all the drama, ABC’s likely on course to deliver the first Finals to average more than 20 million viewers per game since Warriors-Cavs in 2017 (20.38 million).If the Knicks manage to pull off a championship, it’s hard to imagine when normal sports-advertising activity will resume, as New York will be an open-air lunatic asylum for some time after the final buzzer sounds. While nobody is anticipating a Parisian-style riot—last weekend, more than 890 Paris Saint-Germain enthusiasts were sent to whatever it was that replaced the Bastille after their Champions League final celebration got a little overheated—New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently told a local news outlet that he wasn’t worried that his fellow Knicks fans might get a little raucous.“I think New Yorkers are going to have a great time,” Mamdani said in a chat with PIX-11. “I think this is going to be a safe summer … a summer to remember.” (Keeping things light, the mayor earlier this week signed an executive order repealing bedtimes for school-age NYC kids that extends through the completion of the NBA Finals. That the proclamation was rendered in Comic Sans in no way undermines its legitimacy.)However things shake out in New York over the next two weeks, the NBA couldn’t possibly ask for more from the first year under its new rights package. The shift from TNT to NBC coincided with an upgrade to Nielsen’s ratings methodology that has helped power year-to-year growth across the sports TV landscape, and the return of the NBA to 30 Rock has been a triumph on all fronts. All told, NBC closed out its first playoff run in two decades with an average draw of 7.2 million TV and streaming viewers, up 72% versus the comparable postseason coverage of a year ago.Nine of the 10 most-watched playoff games aired on NBC/Peacock.There is some historical precedent for a Knicks-Spurs title bout, as the two franchises met to close out the lockout-shortened 1998-99 campaign. NBC’s five-game set averaged 15.97 million viewers, a sharp downturn compared to the previous year’s turnout. The comps were particularly rough that season, as the NYC-OKC skirmish was no match for what would prove to be Michael Jordan’s final championship in Chicago. Per Nielsen, the 1998 Bulls-Jazz series scared up just shy of 30 million viewers per night.By the time the early hours of June 20 roll around, there’s a non-zero chance that New Yorkers will be erecting a statue of Karl-Anthony Towns in Union Square and an army of Timothée Chalamet devotees will have seized control of the city’s 789 bridges and tunnels. For Gotham-based workplace managers, the best-case scenario is a Knicks win in Game 5 or Game 7, as both scheduled dates lead into weekend mornings. But good luck to anyone trying to keep an NYC business running smoothly should the Knicks manage to wrap things up on the night of June 16, as that’s a Tuesday.But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. As the opening tipoff nears, Adam Silver and his $76 million rights juggernaut are the clear winners here, even if the ensuing legal skirmish over the NBA’s separation from TNT likely robbed the commissioner of more than a little sleep.